


Stolen Lives

by ParadiseAvenger



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: F/M, Mystery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-05
Updated: 2013-03-05
Packaged: 2017-12-04 09:42:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 63,428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/709324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ParadiseAvenger/pseuds/ParadiseAvenger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kairi Hart was betrothed to Vlad Masterson to save her family. She finds something UNKNOWN in the abused servant boy Vlad keeps in the house, but he wasn't her friend. After all, he was just another peice of the PUZZLE. AU. Adult Themes. Secret Pairings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Walk Me from My Life?

Please, check out my first ORIGINAL NOVEL! **The Breaking of Poisonwood by Paradise Avenger.** (Summary: People were dead. When Skye Davis bought me at a slave auction as a birthday present for his brother, I had no idea what my new life was going to be like, but I had never expected this. It all started when Venus de Luna was killed and I was to take her place, to become the new savior… Then, bad things happened and some people died. In the heart of the earth, we discovered the ancient being that Frank Davis had found and created and used to his advantage. The Poisonwood—)

Hello everybody! I have nothing interesting to say.

X X X

There was a bloody stick wrapped in an old cloth and tucked beneath the ratty mattress. On the sagging mattress in the dark basement was a filthy pillow and a threadbare blanket. There was writing on the walls—smeary and bloody, tormented hidden words from a lost forgotten soul… if a soul could even survive in such a hated abused body. The faucet in the bathroom was dripping water and grime. Suddenly, the bare bulb overhead flicked on, banishing the darkness and roaches and rats. The flickering illumination revealed the blood-written words in ghastly relief. A smattering here, a crossing out there, a handprint in blood where in his weakness he had fallen into the wall, the smear of his beaten face where it had struck the white paint. At the base of the wall, like a used and broken toy just thrown away, lay the servant boy as a testimony to those bloody confessions and words.

_I have never known happiness or love or friendship. I have never felt kindness or a soft touch. I am not to speak or to eat or to do anything without being told. I am no better than an insect, than dirt or a worm that crawls on its belly. I am unclean inside, dirty and filthy and used… A long time ago, before I came here to this big handsome house, I lived with a man who loved me like a woman. He didn’t love my mother. He loved me. He came to me at night and lay with me in my bed and made me unclean in the small hours of the morning when my mother slept through my cries. I don’t know how she found out about him because I never said anything and he was careful, but by the time I was eight I was taken away. I was fostered like an unwanted puppy, passed from house to house. After a while, people stopped loving me or even pretending to love me. They just hurt me until I was sold again. Then, I came here to my uncle’s lavish mansion. I can’t say it’s better, but I’ve been through worse. I used to have wishes and dreams… to fly, to be a policeman and save people, to love… but I know that I’m not worth any of that, not now, not anymore… not after everything that’s happened…_

_I am fourteen._

_My name is…_ but the name was smeared out by a bloody handprint.  
…

Mrs. Hart helped her beautiful daughter tighten her corset and slip into the soft creamy silk gown that she had chosen from her small closet, but devoted most of her attention on trying not to cry. She bit her lip hard when her daughter stepped away from her to smooth the silk of the gown over her stunning curves in front of the full-length mirror. Then, she touched her daughter’s silky rose tresses and pulled them back from her face with two small pearl combs.

“Oh, honey,” Mrs. Hart whispered.

Kairi turned to face her mother, swallowing her fear and pride to put on a brave face. “I’ll be okay, Mom,” she said softly.

“I just wish you didn’t have to do this, sweetheart,” Mrs. Hart whispered and gently cupped her face.

Kairi pulled away from her mother and turned back to her reflection in the mirror. She touched her flat stomach, her sharp hips, her pulled-back hair, her face, her lips and her half-lidded eyes and her soft cheeks. “Do I look pretty, Mom?”

“You always do, sweetheart,” she said, but thought, I just wish it wasn’t for someone else. Her eyes filled and she turned sharply away from Kairi before she could see, dabbing at her watering eyes with the linen hanky she kept in her sleeve. 

Kairi walked over to the bed, skirts swishing on the floor. She shrugged into her favorite fur-lined cloak and picked up her small suitcase. Her hands looked so small and white wrapped around the big handle and she smiled hesitantly at her mother. “Walk me to the carriage?”

“Of course, baby,” Mrs. Hart forced out. She watched her daughter walking, narrow hips not-yet-meant-for-childbearing swaying as she walked, hair brushing against her lower back, cloak and skirt trailing on the cold tile. She listened to her light footsteps and a knot in it the size of a baseball began to form in her throat, choking her.

The footman opened the door of the carriage for Kairi and put her suitcase inside for her without a word. Kairi turned, hugged her mother tightly, and then climbed into the carriage. As it pulled away, her face looked small and white and very afraid. Mrs. Hart waved, trying to keep her smile in place until Kairi was out of sight. Then, she allowed herself to break down crying.

…

The Masterson Mansion was a big imposing structure perched high on the cliffs above the slate-grey churning sea. It was all dark-stained wood and huge picture windows that looked out over the sea and big spanning decks with pretty wicker furniture with fluffy dark-colored cushions and candy-striped dark umbrellas. There was a small similarly styled boathouse and along dock at the end of a winding path that led to a private beach with a long strip of perfect white sand. Both had an incredible view of the distant white-and-red lighthouse. 

At the front door, standing beneath the formidable brass lion’s head doorknocker, was a distinguished elderly gentlemen dressed in a three-piece suit with a dark burgundy tie that matched Kairi’s red hair. At first glance, Kairi thought it was the butler, but he took her hand eagerly and kissed the back of it.

“Kairi, my dear, I am Vladimir Masterson.”

Her heart stuck in her throat. “Y-you’re Vlad,” she whispered. 

“Oh, yes.” He took in the whiteness of her face and patted her hand gently. “My dear, were you expecting someone younger?”

She had been. This man had to be three times her sixteen years. He was old enough to be her father and he was to be her… husband! She wet her lips and swallowed before finally finding her voice. “No, I was just surprised by how,” she hesitated, “handsome you are.”

He smiled, all crooked sparkling white teeth, and led her into the dark beautiful house. The entire house was lavish, thick Persian carpets on the floors and austere portraits of the old family on the walls and China cabinets filled with treasures from the far-off worlds. Everything was stunning and exquisite and expensive, like stepping into a box of fine chocolates. Servants bustled out to the carriage, fetching Kairi’s meager suitcase. When the door closed over behind her and cut off the dim sunlight reaching into the dark recesses of the hallway, she felt as if her life was about to end, but it was far from over. 

“So, Vlad, when are we to be wed?” Kairi asked, feeling his thin bony arm beneath her hand as he led her on a tour of the house. 

“Oh, this afternoon at five,” he said with a small wave of his hand. “I have a grand dinner planned for the reception. I’m sure it will seem like a dream to you.”

“This afternoon?” Kairi repeated, feeling a little faint.

“Yes, of course. I’m very eager to begin our lives together.”

“But I… have no dress.”

“I had one specially made for you, my dear.”

Then, he led her to what was to be their chambers. There was a masculine canopy bed taking up most of the room, draped with heavy velvet curtains, and a few beautifully carved dressers. There was one big picture window that looked out over the blue ocean and the distant lighthouse. Spread across the bed was a beautiful white silk wedding gown that Kairi touched gingerly with her fingertips. It laced up the back and she wouldn’t be able to get into it by herself. The thought of her husband-to-be helping her dress made her blood run cold.

“Um, it’s bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding,” Kairi whispered. Considering he had already seen her, it was a desperate attempt. 

“Oh, I know, my dear,” Vlad said and smiled. “I have a servant who will help you dress. I will see you soon, my love.” Then, he left the room and she could hear him calling down the hall. 

It took everything Kairi had not to put her face into the silk of this wedding dress and sob, but she managed to keep it together. After all, her betrothal was to save her family. Her father had been killed in the war and her mother needed the money Kairi’s marriage to Vlad Masterson would bring. Her sacrifice would save her mother and her little brothers. She forced herself to stand up and took a deep breath into her lungs, pushing the tears away, and swallowing the knot in her throat. 

The servant that came to help her dress was an elderly woman with her dense steel-grey hair pulled back into a low bun at the base of her neck. She had rough but expert fingers, as if she had been dressing Kairi forever. Within minutes, she had Kairi laced neatly into her wedding gown and then left her to do her own hair and soft makeup. 

“Darling, are you ready?” Vlad called.

Kairi didn’t look at herself in the mirror. She didn’t want the image of herself on her wedding day burned into her mind.

“You look so beautiful,” Vlad said when she stepped through the threshold. He leaned forward and tried to kiss her—maybe her cheek, maybe her mouth—but either way, she put a hand on his chest and gently pushed him away. Surprisingly, he did allow her to and took her hand to lead her down the hall. “Come now. We must get to the chapel.” 

Kairi couldn’t speak, so she just nodded and lifted her skirts so she could walk down the steps easily. They walked through the exquisite foyer and Kairi’s heels tapped on the tile floor. There was a slender servant kneeling on the floor in the corner, scrubbing away. Kairi thought the floor looked bloody and red, but she didn’t pay it that much mind. She had bigger problems than the state of the floor. 

…

The chapel was beautiful, she supposed. It had so many stained glass windows that she felt as if she was in a world of candy. Vlad had ordered a lot of sweet-scented lilacs that adorned each of the pews in big white-ribbon adorned bunches. The priest was handsome with silvery hair and green eyes and a soft kind face and he had a nice relaxing voice that calmed her churning stomach even as he read the condemning vows. She felt beautiful. Actually, her gown was beautiful. Vlad had exquisite tastes. 

“Do you take this man to be your husband?”

“I do…” Kairi whispered and it was almost without a thought. She felt as if she was trapped in a strange beautiful dream.

Vlad smiled and leaned in to kiss her. His lips were dry and cracked like old parchment, but he smelled wonderful. Maybe he was like a finely aged wine, Kairi thought to herself as he kissed her. Dusty and outwardly unappealing, but sweet and worth it on the inside. 

…

As he had said earlier, the dinner he had laid out for the reception was like a dream to her, even more so than the wedding had been. It was a candlelit dinner for two with several small courses of foods Kairi couldn’t even begin to describe. Then, he had a tray of desserts brought out just for Kairi as he couldn’t ingest too much sugar. She eagerly tasted some of the Death-by-Chocolate cake with the rich swirled icing. Everything was delicious and Kairi was intoxicated on everything she had seen this afternoon. 

Vlad gently took her hand, waving at some servants that were standing in the shadows to begin to clear the table, and led her to their chambers. There, he began to undress her from her wedding gown and corset. In only her panties, Kairi finally realized what he was planning to do with her… tonight!

“No!” she gasped out and clutched her gown to her naked chest. “Please, I’m not ready.”

Vlad stared at her, eyes glowing in the dimness of his bedroom. “My girl, you are my wife now.”

“I know, but please, will you give me tonight?”

He sighed. “Alright, I will give you tonight.” Then, wordlessly, he stripped naked and crawled into his bed. 

Kairi stood there, clutching her dress and shivering desperately. What should she do? Get into bed with him, dressed or naked? Sleep on the floor?

“I won’t do anything to you, just come to bed,” he said suddenly. His voice rang through the silence, startling her. 

Kairi carefully laid the gown on one of the dressers and then slipped between the silk sheets. She felt vulnerable, naked except for her panties. Vlad didn’t touch her, but she feared he would. Finally, she fell asleep, but she woke once in the middle of the night. Unsure what had woken her, she clutched the sheets to her bare chest and looked around the room. Vlad wasn’t in bed and the sheets where he had been lying were cool. She laid back against the pillows, staring out the window at the silvery moon hanging over the sea. A few times, she thought she heard someone crying out, but the sound was scant and far apart. She didn’t get up to investigate and soon feel asleep again.

X X X

Aren’t we proud of me? I managed to keep sex out of the first chapter. Yay me!

Questions, comments, concerns?


	2. Consummation: The Place He Makes Inside

I still have nothing to say. Really. I have nothing.

So, how’s everyone’s weather? It’s damn frozen here.

X X X

When Kairi woke up, she was still alone in her marriage bed. Timidly, she got out of bed, still clutching the sheets to her naked chest, and began searching for some clothes. Opening each drawer of the dressers, she found a large array of clothing—fine silk gowns, lacy corsets, panties, socks, boxers, slacks, button-down shirts, neatly folded ties… She selected a pretty off-the-shoulders gown in pale lilac satin that tied above her breasts with a dark violet ribbon. Then, she slid her feet into some fur-line slippers, made the bed, and treaded carefully down the stairs to the kitchen. She could hear Vlad talking and his voice sounded unbelievably cruel. She hesitated, listening. 

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, have some bread. Your starvation is pathetic. You’re like a slavering dog.” 

Kairi shivered. Who was he talking to? She almost didn’t want to know, but by the time she decided she did want to know and stepped into the kitchen, Vlad was eating a meat-and-cheese omelet and he was alone. Kairi wet her lips, almost asked him who he had been talking to, but decided not to. She didn’t want him to speak to her with that vicious voice. Instead, she just said, “Good morning.”

Vlad looked up from his breakfast and smiled at her very winningly. If she hadn’t heard him only a few moments earlier, she never would have believed it. He looked kind and happy to see her. “Good morning, precious. Did you sleep well?”

She almost mentioned that sound that had woken her during the night, but decided not to. “I did,” she said softly and slid into the chair across from him. 

“What would you like for breakfast? I can have anything your heart desires made for you,” Vlad said and cut a piece of his omelet off with his knife. 

“That looks good. Can I have a bite?” Kairi asked.

Vlad smiled, cut another piece, and fed it to her on his fork. Kairi took it daintily into her mouth, very aware of the way Vlad was watching her. The omelet was delicious. It practically melted into her mouth, so meaty and wonderful and filling. 

“Yum,” she whispered.

“I’ll have one made up for you,” Vlad said happily. He reminded her of a child who had just pleased his mother.

She couldn’t help but smile in return.

Vlad called for a servant and the same woman with steel-grey hair that had helped Kairi dress in her wedding gown came to cook for them. Since Vlad spoke to her kindly, even saying ‘please, will you make an omelet for my sweetheart?’ Kairi decided this woman couldn’t have been the one he had been speaking to in such a cruel voice. When she finished cooking, she set the plate in front of Kairi and poured a big glass of fresh orange juice for her without being asked. 

“Thank you, Franny,” Vlad said nicely and handed her his cleaned plate. She washed it in the sink while Vlad patiently watched Kairi eating. “You have a beautiful mouth, sweetheart, very lush and sexy.”

Her cheeks heated up, pink and embarrassed. “Um, thank you,” she whispered.

“So, what would you like to do today?” Vlad asked. “It’s going to be a beautiful day. Maybe we could take the boat out on the ocean and have a picnic on the open seas.”

Kairi smiled. “That would be lovely. I’ve never been on a boat before.”

…

Vlad a had a beautiful sailboat with full blossoming white sails that looked almost like clouds as they glided across the water. Immediately, Kairi decided she loved the sea. She loved the spray in her face and the wind in her hair and the rocking motion of the boat as it crossed the waves. When she had gone back to their chambers, she discovered slew of summer clothing in the dresser near the adjoining bathroom. She had dressed in a pink-and-white-striped string bikini, a feather-light white sundress embroidered with flowers in all manner of pinks and reds, a wide-brimmed white hat with a long black ribbon tied around it, and some white flip-flops. She felt beautiful dressed so summery with the wind blowing through her slender body. 

“This is amazing,” she shouted over the rush of the surf, laughing. 

“I’m glad you like it,” Vlad called to her. He was standing at the helm, steering the boat into the waves so that even more surf sprayed up onto Kairi.

She put a hand to her head, holding her hat down firmly. 

They sailed out for what felt like eternity, until Kairi couldn’t even see the shore anymore. Far out from the coast, the ocean was as smooth and still as glass and the never-ending ocean wind had stilled to a faint wispy breeze. Vlad lowered the sails and dropped the sea-anchor, bringing the boat to an almost complete stop. Then, he went below deck and returned with a picnic basket. He pulled back the white linen and produced cold chicken legs, potato salad, peaches, sweet dumplings, and cranberry juice. 

“Bon appétit.”

Kairi had a wonderful afternoon with him out on the sea, but the edge of the horizon began to darken and a few stars began to peek out from behind the wispy clouds. She feared the coming of the night, feared what she would have to give to him in their bed that night. She began hanging on him, asking questions and asking to steer the sailboat and doing in badly in the hopes of prolonging the time until her loss. Finally, Vlad took the helm from her, holding her hands tightly on the proper places. It was almost pitch-black and Kairi thought she had managed to escape her fate when Vlad gently patted her shoulder and said, “Hold on a minute. I need to get my star charts.”

“Star charts?”

“So I can get us home.”

“You can sail using the stars?” A cold knot of fear formed in her belly.

“Yes. Did you think we’d be stuck out here all night?”

Kairi tried to get a smile on her face and she must have succeeded because he patted her back and gingerly put her hands back on the helm. For a few moments, he was gone below deck and Kairi was alone with only the sea and the sky. She felt like nothing else existed—not the bed she would soon have to sleep in, or the cruel voice she had heard this morning coming from the lips of her husband, or the cries that had woken her in the night. 

It was just her and the endless sea and the endless sky.

Then, Vlad came back onto the deck and laid out his crackling charts on the small table before the helm. He looked up at the sky and back at the charts a few times and seemed to select the direction they were to go in. He took the helm from Kairi and steered the ship towards the land. Sure enough, within half an hour, Kairi could see the spinning beam of the lighthouse, the glow of the boathouse, and the amber lights of the big mansion on the cliff. 

And just like that, she was back in her life and the joy of the day was behind her.

…

Kairi gently stripped of her summery clothing and felt the chill of the night kissing her bare skin. One of the servants, maybe Franny, had opened the window. Behind her in the darkness, Vlad was sitting on the bed, already naked and waiting for her. She let her dress fall to the ground and then stepped towards him, hiding herself behind her hands. 

“Don’t,” he murmured and pulled her hands away from her chest. 

His lips were still rough and his stubble tickled and pricked at her bare breasts. He took each nipple into his mouth, suckling and lapping as if he would get something from deep inside her. Then, he wrapped his arms around her hips and squeezed the cheeks of her buttocks. Then, his chilly hands were between her legs, stroking her most secret place. His fingers felt rough and dry, even as the touched something that made her entire belly fill with wet heat. She made a small sound, almost like a cry, and Vlad touched her there again. 

Then, he spread her legs, allowing himself more of her to touch. She felt him inside her, rough and cool, stroking the clenching walls of her. She dug her hands into his bare brittle shoulders, feeling as if he was smaller than her, so much smaller, like a fallen broken bird. She let him take her against his body, feeling the heated shaft of him spearing at her most secret place, pushing inside her. It was painful, like a tearing deep inside her. He pushed everything inside her out of the way, making room for himself.

Then, he started moving, sliding around inside her like some kind of beast. She still felt pain, but there was some kind of pleasure deep underneath it. She opened her eyes, looking up into Vlad’s face while he moved above her. His eyes were closed and his lips were pursed as if caught in a sound that wouldn’t come out. For what felt like eternity, he moved inside her. Then, groaning and shuddering, he stopped and she felt fire spilling inside her belly. 

Vlad fell on her, crushing the air from her lungs, but he didn’t stay there long enough to smother her. He rolled off of her, pulling out from inside her, and lying against her naked side. Quickly, he fell asleep, but Kairi was awake for much longer, staring at the moon hanging outside the window. She heard soft whispers outside the door that night, but she couldn’t make out what the voice was saying. It only lasted a moment, but Kairi fell asleep listening to that voice. 

When Kairi woke up the next morning, Vlad was gone from the bed again and Franny was scrubbing some blood from the floor outside their bedroom door.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	3. The Dangerous Servant

It’s so snowy here. And we’re getting more tomorrow. Yay for me… :(

X X X

Kairi stuffed herself into a thick terrycloth robe, forgoing her slippers, and rushed down to the kitchen. She didn’t know why, but she had the impending feeling of horror that Vlad had been hurt even though the drops of blood on the floor outside their room were far from life-threatening even if he had been hurt. She skidded into the kitchen, bare feet sliding on the pristine tile, and caught the back of a chair, stopping herself from an embarrassing fall.

“My dear, whatever is the matter?” Vlad asked as he looked up from his morning paper. There was a cup of coffee steaming on the table in front of him, set neatly on a saucer with a silver spoon, and no sign of injury anywhere. “You look as if you’ve seen a ghost.”

“There was blood outside our door. I thought… you had been hurt,” she confessed.

Vlad smiled softly and toed out a chair for her. “My dear, I’m flattered that you would be concerned for me, but as you can see, I’m alright.”

“But, the blood?”

“Sweetheart, I have a very…” he hesitated, thinking of the word he wanted, “badly-behaved servant. This morning, he needed a little… discipline.” 

“Discipline? What did he do?” Kairi asked.

“Franny said when she went to bed last night, he was whispering in front of our door and he was sleeping there when I woke up this morning,” Vlad explained. 

“You beat him?” she whispered.

Vlad shrugged absently and folded up his newspaper, laying it aside on the table. “He was already injured. Before you arrived here, he fell down the stairs and broke a vase. He is incredibly clumsy. While I was reprimanding him, an old wound simply… opened,” he explained. 

Kairi thought of his cruel voice, of the blood on the floor outside their room, and of the mysterious whispers she had fallen asleep listening to the night before. “Is there any way I could… meet this servant?”

Vlad looked a little nervous. “Actually, I would prefer you never meet him.”

“Why? Is he dangerous?”

“In a way…”

A shiver went down Kairi’s spine. “Would he hurt me?” 

Vlad didn’t say anything, just picked up his newspaper again and continued reading. 

“What’s his name?”

He looked up. “Must you know, my dear?”

Sheepishly, she nodded.

“Sory.” 

The name sounded more like a cry, a scream. It felt like pain, like the feeling of Vlad deep inside her last night, like a beating. She was sure if she saw it written on parchment it would look like an old bruise on the page. Kairi felt it rattle deep in her chest like a rattlesnake’s warning. 

She reached across the table and touched Vlad’s cool hands. “Can I have some blueberry pancakes for breakfast, please?”

He smiled. “Of course, dear heart. You can have anything you like.” 

She was looking at him with those big twilight-colored eyes of her. She was incredibly beautiful with her long ruby tresses and beautiful eyes fringed with lashes so long they shadowed her face. She was like some kind of goddess, like she should be seated on a beautiful velvet throne being admired by millions, yet here she was—all his, completely and irrevocably his. In that moment, he would have given her anything… just like he would have for his first child-bride. 

…

After breakfast, Kairi returned to their chambers and drew herself a hot bath in the beautiful claw-foot tub and sprinkled rose-petals on the surface of the water. She stripped of the robe, laid it on the vanity, and slipped into the water, hissing at the burning warmth that touched her aching core. She noticed a little blood on her inner thighs from the night before and felt like weeping. 

She had lost her virginity. 

There was no shame in losing it to her husband, but she had always dreamed of finding her own love and giving it to her chosen man in a bed of roses and silk. She had never thought there would be blood the night she gave herself away. Her first time was supposed to be a fantasy, but it wasn’t anything like what she had dreamed it would be.

She slumped deeper in the water, enjoying the warm embrace and the smooth porcelain of the tub against her back. She pressed her toes against the bottom, preventing herself from sliding any deeper. 

Regardless, Vladimir Masterson was turning out to be a dream compared to what she was expecting. For weeks, she had had nightmares of her betrothed husband. She thought he would be a cruel sex-driven monster who cared nothing for her or her needs. She had envisioned being chained to the bed naked, unable to eat or go to the bathroom without his permission, alive only to give him her body. But Vlad was wonderful even though he had made her give herself to him the night before. 

She realized she had nothing to fear in this house. 

There was a light knock on the door and she called out, “Yes?” but there was no response. A shiver went down her spine, covering her skin in goose bumps. She got out of the tub and wrapped herself in the robe again, forgoing the towel in case it was the dangerous servant and she needed her hands to defend herself. But when she opened the door, there was no one there and no sign that anyone ever had been. 

Franny walked down the hallway, visible through the open doorway of their shared chambers. She had a bouquet of flowers in her hands and she set them neatly on the marble washstand, arranging the flowers expertly in the vase.

“Um, Franny,” Kairi called. “Did you knock on the bathroom door?”

Franny turned and said sweetly, “No ma’am.”

“Are you sure? I’m sure I heard someone knock.”

“It was not me, ma’am.”

“Alright, thank you,” Kairi said and ducked back into the bathroom. She leaned on the door, still feeling a chill. Shrugging the occurrence off, she stripped of her dampened robe and got back into the tub, sighing in bliss as the warmth embraced her again. 

There were no other mysterious disturbances while she bathed. 

After she got out of the tub, she poured through the dressers and closets, searching for something to wear that suited her chilled mood. Finally, she chose a heavy red knit dress with long sleeves and a high turtle-neck. But, she came downstairs to a troubling sight. Franny was helping Vlad into his suit coat and hat, holding a small briefcase in her gnarled hands. 

“Oh, there you are, sweetheart. I’m so sorry to be leaving you, but something’s come up with the business and I really have to attend to it personally,” he said by way of explanation as he settled his top hat on his silver hair.

“Should I come with you?” Kairi asked, rushing to his side and gripping his sleeve.

“Oh, my dear, thank you for offering, but it would be boring for you. I just have a meeting,” Vlad said and plucked her fingers from his coat. “I’ll be back tomorrow around lunch time. Try not to miss me too much, sweetheart.” Then, he gave her a small chaste kiss and was gone out the door to the waiting carriage. 

Franny closed the door and nonchalantly went about her chores without speaking. 

Kairi stood at the doorway for a while, staring out the window at the empty driveway. Then, she smoothed her dress against her breasts and took herself on a little tour of the Masterson Mansion. She explored the house, room by room, taking in the views out the picture windows of the sprawling ocean and garden outside the glass. She roved the orderly but austere servants’ quarters, bustling kitchen, each bathroom with their big tubs, the decorative foyers, the grand dining room with its long polished table, the spare bedrooms styled completely different from each other, the spanning library, and even the mildly dusty attic. Then, she came to that last door she hadn’t opened. Considering she had been all over the mansion by now, she assumed this was the basement or at least the wine cellar. 

Excited, she turned the cold iron knob and allowed the door to swing open. There was a steep narrow flight of concrete steps going down into the dimness of whatever was down there. She groped around just inside the doorway for a light switch, but was unable to find one. She put her hand on the wall and crept down the staircase. The darkness was completely consuming, like someone had spilled ink. Something brushed her face in the dark. Reeling, her heels hit the step behind her and she fell down on her ass with her skirt flying up to her hips. Flustered, she yanked the dress down over her knees, staggered her way to her feet, and groped around gingerly in the inky blackness. She felt the pull-cord for a light against her palm and pulled.

The sudden light blinded her temporarily and she put her hand out against the wall to steady herself until her vision returned. Then, her breath got lost in her tightening chest. It felt like the time her mother had been in a hurry and tied her corset too tightly—like all her ribs were being crushed, short of breath, heavy feeling in her chest. 

“W-what is this place?” she whispered.

There was a dirty grey mattress pushed up against the far wall, positioned neatly in the corner. On top of it was a tattered blanket and what might have been a pillow. The stuffing was spilling out of it and it had been raggedly sewn up with… brown hair? There was a small bathroom without a door. It appeared to have a simple rusted metal tub, a toilet, and a dripping grimy sink. The walls were dirty-looking, dark and smeary with some unknown substance. Upon closer inspection, Kairi fingered the damp-looking wall and pulled her hand away smeared with blood. She held her breath so she wouldn’t scream and continued scrutinizing the walls. The bloody scratches almost looked like… could they be words? Most of it, she couldn’t make out, but half the words were mildly legible.

_I have never known happiness or love or friendship… kindness or a soft touch. I am not to speak or to eat… I am no better than an insect… I am unclean inside, dirty and filthy and used… I lived with a man who loved me like a woman. He came to me at night and lay with me in my bed and made me unclean in the small hours of the morning when my mother slept through my cries. I was fostered like an unwanted puppy… After a while, people stopped loving me or even pretending… They just hurt me… I used to have wishes and dreams… but I know that I'm not worth any of that, not now, not anymore… not after everything that's happened…_

_I am fourteen._

_My name is…_

Kairi couldn’t make out the name. There was a glob of blood smeared on top of the bloody words, disguising it completely. She let her breath out in an exploding rush and stepped back from the walls, wiping her bloodied fingers on her thigh. She thought of what Vlad had told her—about the dangerous servant, Sory. Could this be… his room? Were these his words? She turned to leave the frightening basement, but her path was blocked. 

Dead silent, she wasn’t sure how long he had been standing there… watching her, breathing on her, just standing there. He had a frightening visage—eyes narrowed into slits, completely red-rimmed as if he hadn’t slept in months, battered and bruised, covered in old wounds. One of his eyes was almost completely swollen shut, his lip was split in three places, and the side of jaw was swollen as if broken. His chocolate hair was sticking up in crazy directions as if he had been tossing and turning all night, unable to sleep. The neck of his shirt was stained with blood and a lot of it had dried on his throat and on his twisted broken-looking hands. 

“What are you doing in here?” he whispered. His voice was more of a growl, so low and injured-sounding that he was more like a wounded animal. “No one comes in here!” 

She let out a shriek of fear and surprise and dove backwards from the staircase. He came down the last of the steps, reaching out those twisted fingers. For a moment, her mind cleared and she wondered if they were broken. Then, the cloud of panic overcame her and she dove recklessly around the dangerous servant for the staircase and the door. She expected to feel the stab of his cold twisted fingers on her back, dragging her into the basement to be devoured, but he let her go.

Kairi slammed the door behind her, clutching the knob tight and leaning hard against it as if to prevent him from coming out, but he did not bang on the door or claw his way through it to get to her. In the basement, it was quiet. 

‘Will you walk into my parlor?’ said the Spider to the Fly.

X X X

I do not own the poem ‘The Spider and the Fly’ by Mary Howitt. 

Questions, comments, concerns?


	4. The Leather-Bound Album

Phew, I think as this story progresses, I’m going to be putting all the important things up here in my author’s note. Not so much for you all, but so I can keep it all as straight as possible, because things are getting a little… _mysterious._ So if you’re lost, look for the little block that I’m going to start adding. Kind of like a previous chapter ‘summary’! 

So more puzzle pieces in this chapter, if anyone thinks they figure something out, keep it to yourself (or message me if you’re dying). Don’t ruin it for the slow ones or the ones who don’t like to try to figure it out ahead of time. 

And gosh darn it! This is just like in All These Lives! SORA DOES NOT EXIST! Rawr, people, you’re driving me nuts! SORA DOES NOT EXIST!

X X X

After her ordeal in the basement, Kairi ran upstairs to her marriage chambers and locked herself in tightly. She crawled into bed, inhaling the scent of Vlad and their sex from the silken sheets, and waited for her hands to stop shaking. Finally, she sat up in bed, clutching the covers against her chest, and thought about what she had just seen—the words on the walls, his beaten frightening risen-from-the-grave vampiric face, the dried blackened blood, the filthy basement room… And she decided that she wasn’t going to tell Vlad what she had done, how she had encountered the dangerous servant, Sory. After a long moment of sitting in bed, she swung her feet onto the floor and went to the window, looking out over the sea and the garden. 

Kairi drew herself another bath, sank deep, and tried to relax, but her thoughts kept whirling around and around like water going down the drain. Sighing, she put her lips beneath the water and blew a mess of bubbles. It was only entertaining and distracting for a moment before her mind returned to the dank bloodied basement. Giving up, Kairi toweled off, stuffed herself into some of Vlad’s slacks and one of his shirts and went downstairs barefoot.

Franny was the only one in the kitchen. She making a pot of tea and Kairi’s appearance in the kitchen, where only servants belonged, startled her. “Oh, Mrs. Masterson,” she said softly and daintily set the teapot on the counter. “Would you care for a cup of tea or would you like something else?”

Kairi smiled at her. “Tea would be lovely and, please, call me Kairi.”

Franny’s thin lips curved into a small smile and she pulled back a padded chair around a small round wooden table centered in the large kitchen where the servants could eat when they desired without dirtying the main dining table. She gestured for Kairi to sit, got a second cup down from one of the cabinets, and then sat across from her at the table. Franny felt Kairi’s eyes on her as she poured the tea into their two cups. She knew that she poured like a professional, holding back her sleeve and exposing the narrow bony white curve of her wrist with expert flare, having worked in a tea shop for many years before coming to work for Vladimir Masterson. She had by now perfected the art of serving tea and did it rather unconsciously.

Franny admired the woman-child before her, dressed in Vlad’s clothing as if missing him already, as she sat down almost eagerly across from the elderly servant. The child-bride, Kairi Hart, was adorable. She had a sweet heart-shaped face framed by long ruby-red tresses and had big doe eyes of perfect twilight fringed with dark spidery lashes. In Vlad’s oversized clothing, she was drowning, accentuating how petite she really was since Vlad was rather small and slender himself because of his advanced age. She appeared desperate for some companionship, surely missing her mother and family, maybe truly missing Vlad. 

Franny could still remember the first child-bride.

“This tea set is beautiful,” Kairi said softly, voice small and hesitant, pulling Franny gingerly from her thoughts. 

“Thank you,” Franny said to her kindly and admired the set once again.

It was made of fine blue porcelain and decorated with a beautifully flaming dragon snaking up over the spout so that the tea was like his fire-breath and burgeoning exotic flowers over the bottom and up the handle. Each cup was painted with either a flower or a smaller dragon. 

“Where did you get it?” the child-bride asked. 

“Actually, it was a gift,” Franny murmured and gingerly traced her finger around the rim. She could never have afforded something this exquisite and beautiful. It was her most treasured possession.

Kairi smiled at her. “From who, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Franny glanced away. “Actually, from Vlad, I mean Mr. Masterson,” she murmured.

Kairi didn’t know why that surprised her. Maybe because her wealthy husband was giving exquisite gifts to his servants and kept on even a dangerous one that appeared to live in the grimy basement and paint words on the walls in blood. Why would Vlad do those strange things?

“I have worked for Mr. Masterson for many years. He gave this to me because my most precious possession used to be a tin tea set that was very rusted around the lid. It made the tea taste horrible,” she paused to sip at her tea. “He has trouble sleeping. One night, he came down and I was drinking from my dented little tin cup at the window. The next day, he bought me this beautiful set and gave it to me without a word. Vlad, I mean Mr. Masterson, is a big one for the small gestures.”

“Is that why he keeps on that dangerous servant?” Kairi asked before she thought about the words coming out of her mouth.

“Dangerous servant?” Franny repeated.

Kairi felt pale and sputtered a little, “Um, Sory?”

“Sor—” Franny cut herself off. “Yes, his nephew, in a way…” She poured herself more tea and sat sipping without a word. 

“Vlad is Sory’s uncle?”

Franny glanced around the kitchen, making sure it was still deserted. “We do not speak of it. Mr. Masterson only keeps him on because he is family and…” Her grey eyes darted and she sipped furtively at her tea. 

“And?” Kairi prompted. 

“We do not speak of it.”

“Why not?”

“In this house, we do not speak of the past.” The way she said past made it sound like a forbidden word that carried a great and terrible weight. 

Kairi turned her face into the faint steam of her tea, inhaled, and didn’t ask Franny any more questions. 

Soon, other servants came bustling into the kitchen to begin making dinner. Franny put away her beautiful set and Kairi retired to the extensive library. She sat the big desk, pulled out some stationary, and a pen. She wanted to write to her mother, but she didn’t know what to say so she sat back and opened each drawer oft eh big desk. The bottom drawer caught fast, blocked by something inside, and refused to open. Determined, Kairi probed around with the back of her pen, pushing down on whatever was causing the block and finally managed to jerk the drawer open. There was a gold-embossed leather-bound photo album titled simply ‘Masterson Family’ in elaborate calligraphy. Kairi made herself comfortable in the big chair, tucking her legs beside her. 

She opened the first page, admiring the old black-and-white photographs. She paged through absently, searching for a familiar face—for Vlad’s face—but she couldn’t find him in a single picture. To be fair, the album was rather small. 

The only interesting picture Kairi came across was one of a thin wisp of a girl wearing pretty white gown, holding a bouquet of white roses, and smiling beautifully at the camera. She had spun-silver platinum-blonde hair and big blue eyes, but Kairi couldn’t tell more than that. The picture was torn in half at the edge, cutting someone else from the picture and then it looked as if it had been burnt. A few charred holes had worked their way up the girl’s legs and through part of the skirt of her gown. The only unmarred part of the picture was her beautiful smiling face. On the back, there was a small date—1872—and a smudge of blackened ink that might have once been the girl’s name. 

Unsatisfied, Kairi slid the picture back into its sleeve and jammed the album back into the drawer. Again, she took up the pen and scribbled, Dear Mother on the top line, but no other words came to her so she got up from the desk and flit around the library in search of something to distract her. She perused the shelves of novels, waiting for something to catch her eye, but nothing jumped off the shelves at her. She went to the window and stared out, missing Vlad despite herself. 

Then, something struck her, slammed through her brain like runaway train. 

She raced back to the desk, tore out the album, and flipped to the picture of the girl. There! In the background, beneath a flowered pavilion, stood the dangerous servant Sory. He was wearing nice dark slacks, a plain white shirt with a loosened tie, and he looked incredibly young and sweet, smiling. Actually, he was a mere child in the photograph. He was nothing like the risen beast she had encountered in the basement. She wondered what had happened to change him and thought of the words on the wall.

_‘Not after everything that's happened…’_

She trailed her finger over his young face on the glossy picture and wondered what had happened to change him so drastically. When Franny called her for dinner, Kairi debated taking the picture from the album, but decided not to. She slid the picture back, put away the album, threw away the paper she had written on, and left the library. 

…

Night had fallen, but the world outside Kairi’s bedroom window was still. The ocean was a muted sound, wafting in from far away even though it was just over the cliffs. Somewhere, a night bird cried. Kairi turned down the sheets, slid into a soft cotton nightdress, and lay beneath the covers, missing the warmth of Vlad beside her. She reached out into the space he occupied the night before with her fingers and twisted them deep in the sheets. Finally, she drifted off to sleep, but heard no whispers at the door nor any cries that woke her during the night. 

She slept in complete lonely peace. 

…

In her own room in the servant’s quarters, Franny had made herself a cup of tea and was sitting in the plush window seat with an old dog-eared book in her lap, but she wasn’t reading. She knew the light was bothering her roommate, but she wasn’t yet ready to turn in. Silently, she sipped her tea and looked out to where the black cliffs were. She could hear the ocean crashing against the base as if it were right outside her window. The ocean always seemed loud to her, endlessly loud, like screams. Franny finished her tea, put the cup on her nightstand, flipped off the lights, and crawled beneath the covers. She fell asleep quickly, but even in her dreams, she heard the screams of the ocean.

X X X

I feel like Anne Rice. 

Usually, I write my entire main plot and set my mood and do all my stuff in conversation. The only thing I really describe are new places, new people, the time of day and the weather, and whatever closing stuff at the end of chapters, but I feel like this entire chapters are nothing but long blocks of description. There’s not much conversation going on. Strangely, even when I read and edit to change that, I love how it’s written and can’t add any conversation. Has anyone else noticed that? It’s weird. 

And Anne Rice writes very little conversation and a lot of description. That’s why I feel like her.

Questions, comments, concerns?


	5. Sory: His Words and His Basement

Quick recap of important things: photograph of the mysterious girl with child Sory and pavilion in the background. 

I made a timeline! As things happen, I’ll be posting them. See, witness:

1872: photograph of child Sory and “girl in white”

X X X

Kairi woke early, unsure what had roused her. Outside her window, a beautiful pink morning was creeping over the horizon like a traveling circus in the sky. Birds were chirping and the ocean was washing back and forth without a care in the world. Continuing as it had for eternity, just like the sun had risen and set without fail since the dawn of time.  
The rest of the house felt quiet, but she was sure a few of the servants were awake—tending to chores and making breakfast and going about their day. As it was, Kairi saw no reason to leave her chambers just yet. She drew herself a bath and pinned up her hair to keep it from getting wet. For about forty-five minutes, she soaked. Then, naked, she went through all the dressers and the closet in search of something beautiful to wear to surprise Vlad when he arrived home. She also decided that when Vlad arrived home she would ask him for a vanity table so she could comb her hair and apply some soft makeup to her lips and eyes. For now, she leaned over the sink and brushed some smoky blues over the creamy lids of her twilight-colored eyes. Pleased with her appearance and feeling sufficiently tempting, she sashayed out of her chambers.

When she opened the door, there was a small crouching shadow. For a moment, she stared blankly, uncomprehending, at the shining sky-colored eyes staring into her in the dimness. Sory! Those gnarled ugly twig-thin fingers of his were taped and braced neatly, proving that they had indeed been broken, picking at each other relentlessly like the many legs of a centipede moving across the floor of a cave. Then, without a sound, Sory scrambled to his feet and darted down the hallway like a mouse in the sight of a cat. Before she even realized what she was looking at, he was gone as if he never was, like a wisp of smoke or a shadow or a darting ghost. Then, she heard a distant door slamming somewhere in the house—maybe the dingy basement?

Kairi’s heart began to pound like a marching drum in her chest and she almost flew back into her room to hide under the covers like a frightened child. Then, she reminded herself of the sweet innocent child she had seen in the picture behind the mysterious beautiful girl in white. Steeling herself, she lifted the skirt of the dress she had chosen and followed quickly after Sory, looking left and right in the rooms she passed. Without finding him, she reached the basement door and there was a small narrow beam of light filtering under the door. Hesitantly, she turned the knob and stepped down the staircase to Hell.

Immediately, a strange smell reached her. It smelled like… sex? And blood? She carefully descended the staircase and allowed her eyes to adjust to the dim light. Lying on the filthy mattress in the corner was Sory. He had his back to her and he was making small whimpering sounds like a small injured animal. 

“Um, Sory?” she whispered.

He jolted upright in his sagging little bed and whirled to face her. Those cerulean eyes of his drilled straight into her soul, burning her, shadowed by the mussed chocolate bangs that hung over his eyes. It was as if she was naked in front of him with all her secrets exposed. His façade was still that of a risen creature, of a monster. He had so many old wounds of his face that it was a wonder he had survived, she realized—scars around his mouth and eyes, a circling of raised crags around his throat like a collar, a star-shaped scar on his windpipe as if it had been stabbed, even a crooked place around his eye socket where the bones appeared to have been crushed inward and healed raggedly. If that was just the state of his face and neck, she shuddered to think of what lurked beneath his clothing.

Sory clutched his twisted fingers to his chest as if to protect them though they had a room’s worth of space between them. “What are you doing in here?” Again, his voice was more of an animalistic growl than a real voice. She wondered if that was because of that wound in his throat. “No one comes in here!” He pressed himself into the corner of the wall, shuddering and rocking. “No one comes in here,” he whispered desperately. “No one comes in here…” 

“Why were you outside my room?” Kairi persisted with the reason she had come. 

His eyes flashed open, bloodshot and red-rimmed. The contrast between the sky-blue and blood-crimson was frightening and she took a step back. He closed them again, pulling his knees to his chest. “No one comes in here,” he repeated.

Kairi began, “I won’t hurt you—”

“Lies!” The banshee shriek that escaped him was like something from the pit of Hell itself and she almost missed the word trapped inside it like a prisoner. “Lies!”

The words on the wall: _After a while, people stopped loving me or even pretending… They just hurt me…_

Kairi backed up the staircase. He was staring at her. Those eyes were killing her. She tripped, fell, and scraped her elbows. He was on her in a split second, as if attracted by the blood, so fast she didn’t even remember seeing him move, but she had been distracted by the pain. Her breath caught in her throat as she felt the heat of his body against her icy skin. He was practically on top of her, his face inches from her own. 

Suddenly, his eyes were less frightening. They appeared soft and hurt. The red was his pain and the blue was his hope, desperately reaching out. He carefully took hold of her wrists with his twisted fingers and they were icy-cold even on her chilly skin.

“Hurt,” he whispered, voice incredibly soft. 

He licked his lips and lifted her arm as if to draw the injury into his mouth, as if to take it away from her, as if her pain hurt him. He had a vampire mouth, sharp perfect white teeth. Suddenly terrified again, she yanked away from him, shoved him back with both hands on his chest, turned, and staggered up the stairs. She slammed the door tightly behind her. After moment, she saw the light turn out around her feet from the crack beneath the door and it was crushingly silent. Some blood dripped down her arms and fell on the floor. 

Kairi cradled her injured elbows in her palms, feeling the burn of her sweat. She went to the bathroom in her chambers and soaked them in cool water in the sink before gingerly taping some gauze over the injuries. She made up a small story to tell Vlad—that she had slipped on the stairs—though she wasn’t sure why she wanted to keep her visit with the dangerous servant a secret. She was sure for her safety, he would dismiss even his strange nephew. 

For some reason, she didn’t want that. She wanted to know the truth about Sory and the strange girl in white in the burned photograph. 

There was a knock on the door of her chambers and Franny called, “Kairi? Mr. Masterson is home.”

A bubble of joy welled up in Kairi’s chest. She pulled down her sleeves, fixed her hair, and pinched some color back into her cheeks. Then, she raced to the door and smiled eagerly at Franny. The elderly woman smiled back and walked with Kairi to the front foyer where Vlad was just shrugging from his suit coat. Kairi hurried to his side, helping him remove the coat from his shoulders and kissed his stubbly cheek. He smiled at her.

“Did you miss me, my love?”

“Yes,” she said almost eagerly.

“I brought you a present to make up for my absence.”

Kairi’s face lit up. With a flourish, he produced a small neatly-wrapped box with a bow on it. She opened it happily, tearing the paper to shreds like a small child. Nestled in rich black velvet was a beautiful diamond broach on a pretty silver choker. 

“Look close,” Vlad said. “There is a silver rose inlaid in the center of the diamond.”

Sure enough, there was. It was a beautiful ornate rose in silver that even had thorns coming off its long crooked stem and its curling leaves. The diamond broach glittered like a misplaced star as she lifted it from the velvet in her palm. 

“Oh, Vlad, it’s beautiful! Put it on me?” Kairi asked.

He readily obliged, fastening it around her throat. 

Kairi touched it and leaned up to kiss him again. “It’s beautiful. Thank you,” she said. 

Vlad turned hr to face the parlor mirror so she could see the beautiful diamond and silver rose glittering at her throat, settling neatly on her windpipe. He kissed the side of her throat, nipping lightly at the chain, knowing full well that she could see him reflected in the mirror. She felt his hardness against her back and her thighs turned to jelly and her belly began to quiver at the thought of being with him again after his absence. 

All pretty flowers have thorns, Kairi thought, but she wasn’t entirely sure what made her think that. 

Instead of dwelling on it, she reached around to cup his hardness and enjoyed the way his groan vibrated against his throat where his mouth was. She angled her head, allowing him better access, and then led him away to their bedroom. Unlike before, she wanted him and it was nothing like before. He didn’t have to make room for himself inside her, tearing and pushing like he had before. In fact, there was already a big empty space just waiting for him. 

…

They ate a wonderful dinner of juicy steak, potatoes slathered with butter, and fresh green beans on the veranda overlooking the ocean. The wicker furniture was so plush it was like sitting on a cloud. Kairi sighed and tipped back her head to admire the stretching sky above her. Vlad’s eyes were on her throat, on the beautiful diamond and rose. It had been a long time since he had seen that pendant on the neck of a woman. It had been in his drawer for too long. 

“You’re beautiful,” he said suddenly.

Kairi blushed. “Thank you,” she murmured and her fingers wandered to the broach at her throat. 

“So, what would you like to do tonight, darling?” Vlad asked. 

She rose from the table, setting her linen napkin beside her plate, and went to the edge of the veranda. She looked out over the stretching ocean, glimmering with shards of moonlight. She admired the boathouse and the lightened fountains in the garden and then turned, resting her elbows on the rail, to admire her husband. 

“I would like to go for a walk on the beach,” she said finally. “And maybe make love.”

Vlad smiled. “We can do both of those things, sweetheart.”

They left the house holding hands, but suddenly on a whim, Kairi pulled him over to the rim of the cliff. She wanted to look down and see how far the drop was, to see what the breaking waves looked like, and if there was a small grey rainbow at night. Vlad followed her obediently, like a puppy, until he realized where she was headed. She was about six feet from the edge of the cliff when Vlad yanked her back so hard that she felt her shoulder crack. 

“Stay away from the cliff!” he shouted.

She rubbed her aching joint. “Why?”

He looked startled. “Because the ledge is unsteady. Before you arrived, almost a foot of the ground just dropped off.”

A shiver went down Kairi’s spine and she wrapped her arms tightly around Vlad’s waist. “Was anyone hurt?”

He was quiet for moment, staring off over the ocean. “No,” he said. “Just, please, stay away from the cliff. I don’t want to lose you.”

Kairi kissed his lips tenderly. “I will,” she murmured. “Now, how about that walk?”

Vlad put his arm around her waist, holding her flush against his body. He led her down the sloping path to the private beach. She was awed by the stunning white sand decorated with pearly shells. There was even a small pavilion disguised by flowering trees that she hadn’t been able to see from the house. She thought of the picture, of the pavilion in the background behind the girl in white. Eagerly, Kairi lifted her skirt and waded into the water to her knees, laughing and calling to Vlad to come in with her, but he stubbornly remained on the beach. Then, they made love on the floor of the pavilion, passionately, and Vlad took her from behind. At the end, Kairi felt sore and stretched and his semen was dripping slowly into her panties, but she was sated. 

They returned to the house, greeted by Franny and some fresh towels in case they had gone swimming. She seemed to know everything that went on inside the house and outside on the grounds. In their chambers, Kairi drew a bath for them both, sprinkling rose petals in the hot water. He saw the pads of gauze on her elbows while he was taking in her naked body as she undressed. 

“What happened to your elbows?” Vlad asked, taking her hands in his own and cautiously peeling off the bloodied gauze.

“I slipped on the stairs today. It’s nothing,” Kairi said with a smile and pushed him playfully towards the tub. “Don’t worry.”

He eyed her, but didn’t say anything more about it. 

Kairi felt a little guilty for lying to him, but she didn’t want him to know that she had been to see the dangerous servant he specifically asked her to stay away from. She was afraid he would take him away before she could find out what had changed him from the smiling child to the frightening basement-dweller. 

Vlad slid beneath the water, sighing in bliss. The rose petals stuck to his shoulders. Kairi bent over, exposed her flushed pink slit so that it reflected in the mirror and was completely visible to Vlad’s eyes, and kissed the petals away. Then, she lounged on top of him in the warm water, stroking the mat of thick silver hair on his chest and feeling his soft member against the back of her thigh begin to push up like the head of a fern. Finally, he bent her over the rim of the tub and had her again. Her hips kept knocking into the cold porcelain, bruising her where the flesh was thin, but she didn’t ask him to stop. They crawled into bed together and she slept wonderfully all through the night. 

When she woke in the morning, Vlad was still tight at her side. For some reason, that made her incredibly happy.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns? 


	6. Masterson Boutique

Recap of important crap: the photograph, the pavilion on the beach.

X X X

Kairi woke Vlad by taking him into her warm mouth. He dug his fingers through her thick sleep-tangled hair and worked her mouth up and down on the length of him. Suddenly, he was hot and salty and dripping from the corners of her lips. She smiled and crawled up his body to kiss him, but he denied her. He wouldn’t kiss her until she brushed her teeth. Then, Vlad asked her to wear the gown of thick blue velvet trimmed with lace at the chest and waist that went perfectly with her diamond broach. When she asked why, he only smiled mysteriously. Then, they went downstairs where Franny had plates of blueberry pancakes set out on the table with two pitchers of different flavored syrup and a big bowl of assorted fruits. After breakfast, Vlad escorted Kairi to the waiting carriage and put a soft blindfold over her eyes. 

Grinning, she asked, “Where are we going?”

“It’s a surprise,” Vlad said. “Now, please, stop asking.” He tweaked her nose and enjoyed the sound of her laugh. 

…

Franny was the unspoken head of the servants in the Masterson mansion. Therefore, she considered it her duty to tend not only the Mastersons, but the other servants. She didn’t know why she felt these mother-hen duties were hers since she had never had any children, but she cared for everyone in the house. With Mr. and Mrs. Masterson out of the mansion and the other servants safely going about their daily chores, she now prepared to tend the person she wasn’t supposed to tend. 

Franny prepared a small breakfast tray with the leftover pancakes along with a glass of water and a roll of bandages. She carried the tray to the basement door, knocked lightly, but went down without invitation. After all, she knew he wouldn’t answer her even if his body was lying twisted at the foot of the concrete stairs after a crippling fall. He hadn’t even mentioned that a few of his fingers had been broken, just went about his work outside in the gardens out of sight. 

As always, he was lying on his side with his back to the door, silent. He did not turn to face her when she entered though she knew that he heard her. He still did not turn, even when she called his name, and for a moment Franny feared he was dead. She went to his side and sat on the dirty mattress, but did not dare touch him. Sometimes, he enjoyed her light touches. Other times, he reacted as if she had plunged a knife deep into his body. 

She did not dare touch him anymore. 

Not ever again. 

Not since he had last pinned her by her throat to the wall and snarled like a cornered animal in her face. 

Not since he had collapsed in on himself right afterwards, sobbing into his hands and trembling like a leaf in a gale.

“I brought you some breakfast. Please, try to eat,” Franny pleaded. 

He didn’t move or respond, perfectly still save the rise and fall of his back as he breathed.

“I need to change the bandages on your fingers.”

That did make him roll over. His hands were lying on his chest, bandages soiled by dirt and water and some faint blood. 

“Can I touch you?” Franny asked, just to be sure.

“Please,” he whispered.

She gingerly took his left hand, watching the pain cross his face, and began to carefully unravel the old bandages. Two fingers on his left hand were broken, three on his right. The bone had come through his thin flesh on a single finger on his left hand and she had splinted it gently the day before. Now, the swelling had gone down, but the flesh was black and blue. She rewrapped each of his broken fingers, splinting them once again and wrapping them tightly. He made no sound of pain, only expressed the pain with his eyes and mouth. 

“I’m sorry. I know this hurts you,” Franny said softly.

He didn’t say a word, only closed his eyes. 

Franny looked away from his face, taking in the walls with all his blood on them. She did not know what the words said as he guarded them viciously. Actually, he guarded everything about himself viciously. He rarely spoke more than one or two words to her. 

Finished dressing his broken fingers, Franny nudged the tray towards him and said again, “Do try to eat something.”

He lay back down and she wordlessly left him alone. It didn’t matter what she did to try to help him. Even if he desperately needed her help, he still wouldn’t ask for it. Franny closed the basement door and leaned against it, taking a few deep breaths. She tried to get the scent of blood and sex and musty basement out of her nose. She didn’t know anything of what happened to him, now or in the forbidden past. 

…

Kairi felt the carriage stop and sat bolt upright. She had been slouching down with her arms crossed over her chest, grumpily ignoring Vlad since he would tell her nothing of what he had planned. Undaunted by her cold shoulder, Vlad took her hand and helped her from the carriage.

“Can I take the blindfold off yet?” Kairi demanded. 

“Eager, aren’t we?” Vlad asked with a small teasing laugh. 

She harrumphed unhappily. 

Vlad took her arm and began leading her. 

“Vlad,” she whined. “Where are we going? When can I look?”

“Alright, if it will make you be quiet, I will give you a hint.”

“Please!”

“I just want you to start looking forward to the summertime.”

“Summertime?” Kairi grinned. “It’s a summer house, isn’t it?”

Vlad gasped. “Clever girl!”

Kairi began giggling, but when he whipped off the blindfold, there was no gorgeous summer house. Instead, she found herself staring at a three-story redbrick building with white shutters and a beautiful stained-glass door. There was a carved wooden sign in the perfect green lawn that read ‘Masterson Boutique’ in fancy gold calligraphy. 

Kairi stared at it, dumbstruck. “I thought you said we were visiting your summer house?”

“Well, you asked me so many times that I decided to play a trick on you.”

Kairi made a face at him, but took his hand. “So, why are we here?”

“Well, after the way I had to run off on my new bride to tend some business, I thought you deserved a tour of the shop.”

Her eyes widened. “You mean you didn’t think this beautiful necklace didn’t more than make up for it?” 

Vlad smiled and took out a ring of keys to unlock the door. Then, he led Kairi inside. Awed, she wandered from room to room. There were beautiful gowns on padded forms, glass cases of jewelry, a wall on hats on false heads, and another wall of shoes. In the back, there was row upon row of colors silks, cottons, satins, wools, and other clothes that Kairi didn’t know the names of along with a rack of multicolored threads. The next room had a big flat table and ten sewing machines with big windows to provide natural light and a small alcove with plain hats, wax fruits and silk flowers, and other millinery tools. Upstairs, Vlad’s office overlooked the entire town. Kairi sat in his chair, spinning around to look out the window.

Vlad came and put his hands on her shoulders, massaging her gently. “I love to sit up here and just look out over this town,” he told her.

“I can see why. It’s beautiful,” she said. 

She tilted her head back and looked up at him and he leaned down and kissed her. They made love on his desk, but Kairi didn’t wonder if anyone could see her from the street below. Even if they could, she didn’t care. Vlad was feeling better and better to her. 

Then, he treated her to a nice lunch, brought her back to the shop, and explained to her a little about how he worked. She was eager to learn and he let her see everything she wanted. Well, almost everything. For some reason, he wouldn’t let her into the basement. He said it was full of box after box of old gown designs and other paperwork, very dusty, and no place for a lady. Then, wearing a beautiful gown of palest sun-gold with tumbling chocolate curls, Vlad’s chief dress designer arrived. 

“Sweetheart, this is Miss Selphie Tilmitt,” Vlad introduced. 

Selphie looked at Kairi with bright green eyes and instantly smiled. “You look lovely. I designed that dress for someone with a figure just like yours,” she said cheerfully. “So, Mr. Masterson, what brings you into the shop today? I thought we were closed and I was just coming by to pick up a few designs I wanted to work on.”

“We are, I just thought my lovely bride deserved a tour of the shop.”

Selphie smiled. “That’s wonderful of you. I hope I’m not disturbing you, then.”

“Oh, no, please, fetch whatever you need.” Once Selphie was out of earshot, he said to Kairi, “Without her, this shop would be impossible to run. I have never seen such magnificent designs. No one is on par with her.”

“That’s wonderful,” Kairi said and admired her dress in a new light now knowing the girl who had designed it. “This is incredibly beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it, but I can from a small town.”

Vlad kissed her. “Then, love, prepare to be spoiled.”

…

That night, Vlad was exhausted by their lovemaking and feel asleep within minutes of his head hitting the pillow, but Kairi couldn’t sleep. After lying awake for hours, she finally gave in and got out of bed. She wrapped herself in her thick robe, put her feet in her slippers, and roamed the house like a wraith. She found herself once again drawn to the library, but she did not open the drawer to look at the photograph of the girl in white and Sory. Instead, she found a book to read and settled in one of the overstuffed chairs. Turning on a lamp, she began reading and was up well into the night. Finally, she felt ready for sleep. As she passed the basement door, she reached out and turned the knob, but it didn’t turn. It simply rattled in her hand—locked. Startled, she stared at the door, uncomprehending. Sory was down there, right?

“What are you doing?” Vlad’s voice startled her, ringing through the hallway like a dropped pan. 

She jolted, pressing a hand to her pounding heart. “Oh, you startled me.”

“What are you doing?” His voice sounded cold, not the cruelty she had heard in the kitchen.

“I couldn’t sleep. I was reading in the library.”

“Why are you trying to open the basement door?”

“I didn’t know this was the basement,” Kairi lied quickly. 

She wasn’t sure Vlad bought it, but he said only, “Come to bed, dear.” Back in their marriage bed, he held her tightly against him all night as if afraid she would flee. She lay awake for a while, but finally drifted off to sleep. 

…

Franny took the photograph from its secret place, admired it, and gently touched the innocent face she missed seeing each day. She wasn’t sure what had broken him, but she wished she could bring the old him back. Then, she slid the photo back into its hiding place and dusted the entire mantle so that no one would be able to tell she had touched it. For a while, she sat on the veranda with a cup of green tea and listened to the ocean screaming at the foot of the cliffs. Unlike Kairi, she couldn’t sleep at all that night.

X X X

I love how Franny is developing. She’s really moving things along. She was meant to just be a “servant character,” but she’s kind of taken on a life of her own. Sory’s also developing nicely and rather mysteriously, very twisted. 

Things to consider: actually, I don’t want to go into that because it might give away the plot. Ah, what the hell, let’s make it more interesting!

_How did Sory’s fingers get broken?_

_What is the secret photograph of?_

_Why was the basement door locked?_

_What happened to poor Sory?_

_Why does the ocean scream to Franny?_

_What happened to the first child-bride?_

_Who is the girl in white?_

No answers please, just things to consider for you readers! If you think you know, don’t share and ruin it for others! And no more SORA! Rawr! 

Questions, comments, concerns?


	7. The Spider & The Fly

Important information to remember: both photographs—the girl in white and the secret photograph.

 **RANT!** I am getting a little tired of getting reviews and everyone saying the rape/abuse/torture of Sora and Kairi is getting boring and I should try something new (which I am! This is a mystery story). If anyone has been paying ANY attention, no one has been raped or otherwise abused in this story. 

Yet. 

Yes, Kairi is married to a very old person, but that is not really abuse or uncommon for the time period. And yes, clearly, Sory (SORY, SORY, SORY!) is messed up, but I haven’t said what happened to him yet. Yes, his fingers are broken, but he could have fallen down the stairs on his face/hands. Yes, he did mention a possible rape, but it was written in blood on the wall but the guy who gets locked in the basement. How much stock are you going to put in what he says?! He could be a big old fibber or it might not even have been written by him! Vlad could have written it. The name is smudged out, remember? 

You don’t know yet! 

Wait until, like Chapter 12, to start on me. Right now, you all know nothing! Rawr, everybody! Plot is still unfolding, chill out! **RANT OVER!**

*pant pant*

Don’t make me rant anymore, it tires me out and then chapters come slower. (Wow, that was a long author’s note.)

X X X

The next morning, Vlad had breakfast with Kairi, kissed her, and then went off to work at the Masterson Boutique. He didn’t say anything about the locked basement door or finding her there in the middle of the night, just acted like a soft-spoken well-meaning husband. Kairi stood at the window and watched the carriage disappear into the bright golden morning. Then, she floated around the house, unsure of what to do with herself. Finally, she decided to go down to beach, just to feel the sand beneath her feet and the water lapping at her toes.

She stripped of her robe, slid into a sundress, and walked barefoot down to the private strip of white sand. Her twilight-colored eyes were drawn to the black cliffs, studying the massive drop at suck a towering angle that she couldn’t even see the mansion just above it. She waded knee-deep into the ocean, feeling the lap of the surf on her thighs and lifting her dress. The water was warm and perfect, sun shining on the sapphire wine-dark waves like liquid gold. She wanted to go for a swim, but her dress was white and it would be the same as lying out naked. Even on a private beach, that was not something she wanted to do. She hurried back up to the mansion, whistling and singing along to her own tune.

Inside, she encountered something rather strange. 

Franny was forcing a ring of crooked black keys into the basement door, struggling to find the right one to unlock it. Kairi ducked around the corner, peeking around to watch as Franny finally got the door open. She yanked it open as if her life depended on it and immediately, the dangerous servant Sory spilled out of the descending stairway. He flung both his arms around Franny’s waist, sobbing into her like a small child. He was half-nude, wearing only slacks and an open cotton button-down shirt. The expanse of bare flesh was toned with muscles and crisscrossed with scars and heaving with the exertion of his gasping breaths. 

Franny cradled him against her chest, stroking his shaking back and holding him tenderly and letting him cry for a long moment. Then, she gingerly whispered something to him. Kairi saw Franny’s thin lips move, but she couldn’t make out what she was saying. Sory didn’t even look as if he heard her, just continued clutching the elderly servant with his bandaged fingers. Finally, he put a little space between them, licking his chapped lips. Surprisingly, his face was dry. He hadn’t been crying. 

Franny spoke to him again, even softer, and he nodded faintly before scampering away down into the basement. He was only gone a moment before he came back up the stairs, clutching what looked like a mess of soft pale-blue silk that he handed over to Franny so fast it was as if he were afraid it would come to life and devour him. She hid the cloth under her hands, but his cerulean eyes remained glued on the bundle. Suddenly, Franny turned and walked away from him without a word. 

It was strange for them to have a sheaf of pale blue silk. Why would Franny be making a dress or even putting the finishing touches on one? Vlad ran a dress-making boutique where he had professionals working for him. It just didn’t make sense.

Sory stood in the hall for a moment, staring at the space where she had been. Then, he turned his head very suddenly to the place where Kairi was spying. His eyes touched on her like something tangible, like a finger of ice down her spine, and she quickly ducked around the corner of the wall, breathing hard. She didn’t know why her heart was pounding so wildly. 

Finally, she heard the basement door close softly, but her heartbeat did not slow. She eased away from the wall, slammed her knee into the coffee table, and put her hand out to steady herself. Her fingers caught the mantle, knocking over five bronze picture frames in a domino effect. They each clattered to the floor and the glass of one shattered like a bone breaking. She bit her lip to stifle a cry of pain, glanced over to make sure neither Sory nor Franny were coming to see what the noise was, and then knelt to gather up the fallen frames. Then, since she hadn’t noticed these pictures while she was exploring the mansion the first time, she studied each photograph closely—searching for some sign of the identity of the girl in white. 

The first photograph was of a beautiful couple on what was clearly their wedding day. The woman was wearing an exquisite lace gown and the man the three-piece black suit that looked incredibly like the one Vlad had greeted Kairi in the first day she met him. At the bottom in beautiful calligraphy was the simple inscription—Anastasia and Dimitri Masterson, 1822. Tucked behind it in the frame was a crumbling yellowed wedding invitation with lilies drawn on in black ink. 

“A child-bride?” Kairi whispered after reading the invitation and learning that Anastasia had been seventeen when she and Dimitri were married.

The second was of Anastasia and a beautiful baby. She was sitting on what looked like a sailboat, the sail like a cloud behind her. She was holding a wide-brimmed hat to her head, shadowing her face, and a lot of her red hair was blowing in her eyes from the sea breeze, but she was smiling beautifully. The baby was reaching out his chubby fingers for whoever was taking the photograph, grinning a toothless grin and laughing. There was no inscription on it, but it looked creased, as if it had been in someone’s wallet a long time.  
Vlad’s mother was beautiful, like some kind of fairy-tale princess with her ruby-red tresses not unlike Kairi’s own, but Kairi thought she was nowhere near as beautiful.

The third was of young Vlad shaking hands with his father outside the Masterson Boutique. Kairi assumed it was the day he succeeded his father and took over the family business in his place. She had never seen such a beautiful smile on Vlad’s face. The date was 1853 with nothing else. 

She stroked the glossy photograph with her fingertip, smiling. Vlad looked so happy, so proud. 

The fourth had the Masterson Boutique in the background. A lovely white gazebo threaded with flowers had been erected on the large perfectly green lawn and a small crowd of nicely dressed people with their glasses raised in a toast had gathered in front of it. Each face wore a smile, but none was as bright as that of a young woman with dark hair and wearing a simple white sundress. Vlad was standing beside her with his arm around her narrow shoulders. The date was smudged, but Kairi thought it said 1854.   
Whatever was written after the date, though, had been viciously scribbled out.

The fifth was of the flowered pavilion on the private beach. There were many finely-dressed guests dancing and eating and laughing. On a long table, at the center, was a three-tiered white wedding cake. Kairi looked hard, but she saw neither the girl in white nor the child Sory. She only saw Vlad, wearing neat black suit and talking to someone who looked like his beautiful aged mother. It was dated simply, June, 1872. The glass of the frame was cracked straight across like a tattered wound.

“A wedding?” Kairi whispered and fingered the cracked glass. 

She heard a sound—a door opening—and jolted to her feet as if someone had lit a candle under her ass. She hurriedly put the other four frames on the mantle, arranging them so it wasn’t immediately obvious that one was missing. Then, she hid the broken one beneath her dress, brought it upstairs to the library, and hid it beneath the cushions of the chair she had been reading in the night before. Content with that, she hurried to her chambers, ducked inside, and leaned heavily against the door. Then, she went to the window and looked out. 

The ocean still glimmered invitingly, but she had lost her taste for swimming. 

There was a knock at her door and Franny called out, “Miss Kairi, are you in there? I sent one of the boys down to the beach with lunch and they said you weren’t there. Hello, Miss Kairi?”

The image of Franny clutching Sory to her pulsed in Kairi’s head, but she shoved it away and went to the door to let the elderly servant in. She bore a tray of finger sandwiches, a tall glass of juice, and a neatly cut and peeled apple with a smile. It really killed Kairi to wipe the smile from Franny’s face, but she had to ask.

“Why don’t you speak of the past in this house?”

Franny gave a long-suffering sigh and gently closed the door behind herself as she entered. She set down the tray, sat on the bed, and then patted the space beside her. “Sweetheart, do you realize that you have left your family? You now belong solely to Mr. Masterson and he does not like to speak of the past. As his wife, you must obey these orders and not forsake the vows you took in the beautiful church.”

“But, what if I want to know something?”

“Then you stifle it.” She gently took Kairi’s soft hands in her own rough ones and soothingly rubbed them. “The past is not to be spoken of.” 

Kairi swallowed. 

Franny’s face looked pained and she turned to gaze out the window at the sea and the cliffs beyond the glass. 

“But…”

“No, Kairi,” Franny said and the vehemence in her voice startled Kairi. Then, she said something that chilled Kairi to the bone. “Too many lives have been stolen by the secrets in this house.”

The walls pressed in on Kairi, smothering her, choking her. Her stomach heaved, her skin broke out in a hot-cold sweat, she began to shake, and her breath became compressed in her chest. It was like being in Sory’s basement again—crippling horror, terror, shock. She couldn’t get in a breath and she could hear Franny calling to her but her voice sounded as if it was coming from very far off. Then, blackness wrapped its fingers around Kairi and the Reaper took her under his cloak.

…

Someone was reading aloud, voice drifting in as if washed ashore on the waves, in and out, in and out. A woman’s voice, lilting and soft and musical, with lots of inflection and lovely pace as she read a poem loud and clear. The voice was reading, in and out, in and out, in and out, like the washing of the waves on the shores. Was the ocean screaming? It was a faint banshee shriek. The voice overtook it, drowned it out, but it was still there—hidden underneath the façade of a poem.

_“Will you walk into my parlor?" said the Spider to the Fly,  
“'Tis the prettiest little parlor that ever you did spy;   
the way into my parlor is up a winding stair,   
And I've a many curious things to show when you are there."   
“Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "to ask me is in vain,   
For who goes up your winding stair can ne'er come down again." _

_"I'm sure you must be weary, dear, with soaring up so high;  
Will you rest upon my little bed?" said the Spider to the Fly.   
"There are pretty curtains drawn around; the sheets are fine and thin,   
And if you like to rest awhile, I'll snugly tuck you in!"   
“Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "for I've often heard it said,   
They never, never wake again, who sleep upon your bed!" _

_Said the cunning Spider to the Fly, "Dear friend, what can I do,  
to prove the warm affection I've always felt for you?   
I have within my pantry, good store of all that's nice;   
I'm sure you're very welcome—will you please to take a slice?"   
"Oh no, no," said the little Fly, "kind Sir, that cannot be,   
I've heard what's in your pantry and I do not wish to see!" _

_"Sweet creature!" said the Spider, "you're witty and you're wise,  
How handsome are your gauzy wings, how brilliant are your eyes!   
I've a little looking-glass upon my parlor shelf,   
If you'll step in one moment, dear, you shall behold yourself."   
"I thank you, gentle sir," she said, "for what you're pleased to say,   
And bidding you good morning now, I'll call another day." _

_The Spider turned him round about, and went into his den,  
For well he knew the silly Fly would soon come back again:   
So he wove a subtle web, in a little corner sly,   
And set his table ready, to dine upon the Fly.   
Then he came out to his door again, and merrily did sing,   
"Come hither, hither, pretty Fly, with the pearl and silver wing;   
Your robes are green and purple—there's a crest upon your head;   
Your eyes are like the diamond bright, but mine are dull as lead!" _

_Alas, alas! How very soon this silly little Fly,  
Hearing his wily, flattering words, came slowly flitting by;   
With buzzing wings she hung aloft, then near and nearer drew,   
Thinking only of her brilliant eyes, and green and purple hue—   
thinking only of her crested head—poor foolish thing! At last,   
Up jumped the cunning Spider, and fiercely held her fast.   
He dragged her up his winding stair, into his dismal den,   
Within his little parlor—but she ne'er came out again! _

_And now dear little children, who may this story read,  
To idle, silly flattering words, I pray you ne'er give heed:   
Unto an evil counselor, close heart and ear and eye,   
And take a lesson from this tale, of the Spider and the Fly._

Kairi felt misplaced, as if she was in a dream. She drifted through the familiar hallways of the Masterson mansion. Her feet stopped her in the library which still looked the same although she felt as if she had gone back a thousand years. Someone was sitting in the big overstuffed chair where Kairi had hidden the broken photograph. She couldn’t make out any features other than the soft reading voice and a smudge of white. Was it a ghost or a wisp of smoke? At the reading woman’s feet was a small shape, looking up, watching, listening, waiting. 

Kairi was guided to the desk and to the drawer with the leather-bound photo album. She watched her hands open it, take out the album, and open to the page of the mysterious burned and torn picture. The girl in white… child Sory… 

The woman was still reading, her voice going in and out, in and out, as if the wind was blowing it away.

“What does it mean?” Kairi said aloud as she turned to look at the smoky pair sitting and reading. 

The woman continued, as if she had not heard, but whoever was kneeling at her feet turned his head. Cerulean sky-blue eyes shot through Kairi’s body like needle of ice. His gaze was like a physical slap to her stunned face, aching and ice-cold. She knew only one person with eyes like that.

X X X

I do not own the poem 'The Spider and the Fly' by Mary Howitt.

Is everyone keeping up?

Questions, comments, concerns?

REVIEW! You are all bad reviewers!


	8. Vision of Eagles and Horses

I love listening to all the speculation everyone is coming up with. 

It’s awesome and hilarious because some of you are way off! And others are pretty close in places!

X X X

With a shout, Kairi woke with a start. She could still feel Sory’s eyes on her, but she alone in her room with the covers pulled up to her chin. The tray Franny had brought for her was still sitting on the bedside table. What had happened? She sat up and put a hand to her aching head. Right, she had fainted.

Franny’s words came back to her. _"Too many lives have been stolen by the secrets in this house."_

But, had Kairi imagined the elderly servant saying that? Had that just been a part of her dream, like the reading woman and Sory? No, she didn’t think so. It had felt too real, more like a memory than a dream, but that was impossible. 

Kairi sat up and reached for the glass of juice Franny had brought for her. She drained it in two swallows, unbelievably thirsty, and then got out of bed. She stilled felt dizzy and weak, but her stomach didn’t feel queasy anymore. For that, she was grateful.

_"Will you walk into my parlor?" said the Spider to the Fly._

Suddenly, the library and the poem seemed like everything! Kairi rushed to the library at top speed, hurling open the doors, and quickly scanning the shelves for a book of poetry, but such luck. Disheartened, she sank down in the overstuffed chair. She couldn’t feel the broken frame hidden beneath the cushion. Then, she put her arms on the arms of the chair, her feet on the floor, and leaned back in the chair. The misplaced feeling came back to her, sticking in her throat and weighing on her chest. 

She looked down at her feet, trying to imagine what it would be like to have child Sory kneeling at her feet, listening to her read. She imagined his little fingers on her knees, warm and soft, unbroken. She was unable to imagine him smiling up at her, but she could see him sitting there.

“What about the reading woman?” Kairi whispered. “Who was she?”

But, since she had been unable to find the book of poetry, Kairi stood up and left the library. She found Franny in the kitchen, whistling absently while she did the dishes with some water boiling on the stove for tea. The beautiful dragon tea set was sitting out on the counter, waiting, along with a box of black tea. 

“Hi, Franny,” Kairi called.

The elderly woman turned and offered her a small smile. “Are you feeling better?”

“Yes,” Kairi said and pulled out one of the chairs at the small wooden table. “Could I have a cup of tea with you?”

“Just after I finish the dishes,” Franny said.

Kairi waited until Franny had finished, dried her hands, brewed the tea in her beautiful pot, and sat down across from her at the little table. They sipped their tea in amicable silence for a few long moments, enjoying each other’s company. 

“Can I ask you something?”

Franny took a sip of her tea and sighed. “Kairi, you cannot go digging around in the past.”

She smiled and tucked some red hair behind her ear. “I know. This is about something else.”

Franny looked at her suspiciously, but nodded. 

“It’s just, my mother used to read me the poem, The Spider and The Fly, and I just can’t remember who wrote it.”

Franny looked as if she had seen a ghost, eyes wide and face draining of color, but she had no reason to suspect Kairi of anything. It was very likely that he mother had read her the poem and she had simply forgotten the name of the poet. “Mary Howitt,” she said softly. “The Spider and The Fly was written by Mary Howitt.”

Kairi smiled. “That’s it! Thank you, Franny! Do you know if we have a book of her poetry in the library?”

“As a matter of fact, I think we do,” Franny said. “It should be in the poetry section.”

After that, Kairi sat talking to Franny for a long time. It was near impossible for her to sit still while the prospect of finding out who the mysterious reading woman was, but getting to it tonight was just beginning to seem impossible. While she was still talking with Franny, anticipating, Vlad came home. He fastened Kairi to his side when he arrived home, taking her for a long walk on the beach and then out on the boat. Then, they had a wonderful meal of juicy steak, buttered baked potatoes, flaky rolls, and sweet wine. Vlad adjusted the rabbit ears of the television set for several minutes, finally got clear signal, and sat down on the leather sofa with her to watch a little television. They retired to their chambers, making love for what felt like eternity. Then, Vlad lay awake talking to her for even longer. By the time he finally fell asleep, Kairi had been ready to explode.

She got quietly from their bed, not bothering with her robe or slippers, only getting back into the silk nightgown she had been wearing before Vlad pulled it off of her. She hurried to the library, went right to the poetry section, and pulled down the slender leather-bound novel titled The Complete Works of Mary Howitt. Kairi had a few books of her own—a treat since her family was so poor—and inside the cover of each was not only her name but the small inscription from her mother and father. She was hoping that the book belonged to the reading woman and that see, too, had written her name inside the front cover. 

Sure enough, in neat calligraphy was a small message from Vlad saying, _‘You are my beautiful butterfly, love, and there is no one else like you. Please enjoy your favorite poems on this special day.’_ Beneath the neat _‘This book belongs to:’_ inscription was the name Namine Waters. 

“Got you,” Kairi whispered. “Namine Waters.”

“Got who?” a small voice whispered.

Kairi whirled around, startled, but no one was there. She was completely alone in the library, not even pale silver moonlight was coming in through the big picture window. “Hello?” she called in a small wavering voice but no one answered her. Feeling nervous and slightly sheepish, Kairi put the book back on the shelf and returned to her chambers. She slipped back into bed without waking Vlad and slept soundly through the night. 

…

Over a breakfast of waffles with strawberries, Kairi asked Vlad, “Darling, could I maybe go out for a ride today?”

“A ride?” Vlad repeated. 

“Yes, I just want to explore a little. I’m a very good rider.”

“I don’t know, love, but we’re so close to the ocean. I ground could be unstable and I don’t want you getting hurt.”

Kairi wet her lips. “What if I take someone with me?”

Vlad smiled. “Does going on this ride mean a lot to you?”

She smiled at him lovingly. “I love to explore and I love to ride. It’s one of my favorite past times and since you have to work today I was hoping to take a picnic lunch and just go for a nice ride.”

“Well, I don’t see anything wrong with that. Just be sure you take the dapple grey mare. Come hell or high water, that horse will stand firm.”

Kairi leaped up from the table, threw her arms around Vlad’s shoulders, and hugged and kissed him eagerly. “Thank you so much!”

“I know how you can thank me,” Vlad whispered to her.

Before he left for work, they made love twice. 

…

Seconds after Vlad left, Kairi practically flew back up to her chambers. She dressed in a simple long wine-red skirt, a loose white blouse, and her knee-length riding boots. Then, she scraped her hair back into a ponytail, leaving a few untamable short pieces loose to frame her face. She took her leather messenger bag and slunk her way to the library where she stashed the torn burned photograph of Sory and the girl in white, the book of poetry with the name Namine Waters written on the inside cover, and the broken frame from beneath the cushion in her bag. Then, she went downstairs to the kitchen where Franny had a saddlebag with lunch already packed for her. 

The elderly servant’s expression was not pleased. “Who are you taking with you?” Franny asked as Kairi picked up the saddlebag and slung it over her shoulder.

Kairi had forgotten about that. “Um, I thought I’d bring one of the stable hands.”

Franny’s eyes widened and she looked about to say something, but Kairi blew out of the house like a summer breeze. She didn’t want anyone to stop her from going on this ride. Honestly, if Vlad had said no to her, she might have gone anyway. Weighted by her pack and the saddle bag, Kairi didn’t drag her feet even though the garden she passed through to get to the stable was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. A gardener was trimming a white rosebush, butterflies had coated a lilac tree, and birds fluttered in the tall pink Sakura tree. 

Finally, the stables came into view—a big handsome structure of dark wood that matched the mansion with big shuttered windows at each stall so that the horses could look out. By now, the horses were out in the paddock. Vlad had five good horses—two that pulled his carriage each morning, alternating, and the remaining three were left with the day off. In the paddock now were the white-and-black Indian paint, the dapple grey, and the gold-and-black buckskin. 

Someone was standing among the horses, face hidden because it was resting on the broad neck of a beautiful white-and-black paint and the horse’s mane was blowing on the breeze. Kairi put the saddlebag over the split-rail fence and leaned her elbows on the top beam, just watching the stable hand with the horses. He was brushing them down with endless patience and tenderness and she could hear his voice on the warm summer breeze. Then, she saw his fingers—broken, bandaged tightly, splinted. 

Sory.

Kairi almost fell over backwards in shock, but somehow managed not to. She had trouble meshing all the images she had of him—the innocent child in the photograph with the girl in white, the monster she had encountered in the basement, the young man who had been desperately clutching Franny without crying, the child listening to Namine Waters reading poetry in the library, the dangerous servant, this caring stable hand whispering and brushing the horses… 

He was like a puzzle, but the pieces weren’t fitting together anymore.

Suddenly, Sory turned and those cerulean ice-blue eyes in her direction. His gaze was like a physical touch, but for once it didn’t chill her to the bone. It was almost as if the tenderness of him tending to the horses washed through his eyes and into her. It felt like someone was stroking her hair. Then, without a word, he rested his cheek on the paint’s high shoulder and continued brushing the length of its strong neck. 

Kairi lifted her skirt and climbed over the fence, dropping down into the paddock. The grass was thick and springy under her feet. The dapple grey nudged her in the back as if to propel her towards Sory. She did stumble towards him with or without the horse’s help. 

“Um, Sory, I didn’t know you were the stable hand,” Kairi murmured.

He didn’t lift his head from the horse’s neck, just continued stroking the great animal. “I like horses,” was all he said. 

Kairi was standing next to him by now, so close that she could feel the heat of the horse’s big body. She reached out and gently touched the horse’s neck. Sory had brushed the hair so long that it felt like silk beneath her palm. “Oh, wow,” she whispered.

His eyes opened and fixed on her hand, watching her gently stroking the horse. “Her name is Tiger Lily,” he murmured and then closed his eyes again. 

For what felt like an eternity, Kairi watching him brushing down Tiger Lily with his head resting comfortably on her flank. He looked so serene, so calm, and even mildly happy. He looked half-way to the carefree child she saw in the background of the photograph with the girl on white. Finally, he lifted his head, picked up a basket of grooming supplies, and moved across the paddock to the dapple grey and began to brush her down in the same way—tenderly resting his head on her. 

Kairi followed him across the paddock, placing her hand closer to Sory’s face this time and continuing to stroke the horse. “What’s her name?” she asked. 

“Polly,” he murmured. 

Kairi stood with him, watching his wordlessly work. When he wanted her to move her hand, she simply did. He didn’t even have to say anything to her. He moved on to the third horse—the buckskin stallion whose name was Spirit—and spent extra time combing out his long black mane. Finished, he put all the brushes back in the basket and carried it off to the stable. Kairi followed after him, drifting as if drawn on an invisible string. 

In the cool earthy hay-scented stable, he opened the tack room and put away the grooming basket. Then, he took down one of the six saddles and began to rub oil into the leather, polishing them until they shown. Only then did Kairi tell him her real reason for being here.

“I’m going for a ride today and I need someone to accompany me. I told Franny I would take the stable hand, but I didn’t realize it was you,” she murmured. “I’d like you to go riding with me, either way.”

His hands stilled in their work and he was quiet for several beats. Then, he looked up into her face and she saw a glimpse of the child listening to Namine reading. 

“Would you go riding with me, Sory?” Kairi repeated. 

He took down the sidesaddle and began rubbing it down, as well, leaving out the other saddle. Wordlessly, he picked up the sidesaddle and carried it out into the paddock where he gently tacked up the dapple grey, Polly, for her. Then, he returned to the tack room, brushing past Kairi silently, and brought out the second saddle. This one he put on the paint, Tiger Lily, and tightened the cinch. He took the saddlebag off the fence and put it up behind Tiger Lily’s saddle, tying it on with the small leather straps. Then, he put light copper bits in their mouths. He gently mounted up and sat, waiting, while Kairi stared blankly at him. Finally, he turned his head and touched her with his eyes. 

Kairi scrambled to the dapple grey and slipped herself into the saddle. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise, but regardless of how long you’ve been doing it, riding sidesaddle is a damn pain in the ass. She arranged her skirt over her knees and nodded to Sory lightly. He was already at the gate, leaning carefully down to unlock it. They rode out of the paddock and Sory locked the gate behind them. The remaining horse, Spirit, nickered softly at them and came to stretch his neck over the fence as if reaching out. Sory turned in his saddle, looking back at the single horse, but said nothing. 

His face looked so soft and sad that Kairi wanted to distract him. She gently kicked Polly’s sides and urged her into a canter. Forced to keep up, she could hear Sory galloping behind her but she did not turn to look back. 

… 

Riding horseback was akin to flying. Kairi leaned low over the dapple grey’s neck, gripping her mane tightly in her slender fingers, and feeling the wind in her face as the world whipped by. She felt the ripple and bunch of the great animal’s muscles, felt her breath, and felt the ground beneath her hooves. If she was a bird, flying, all she would feel was the wind and see the scenery. Honestly, there was nothing on God’s green earth like riding horseback. 

Kairi pulled her horse to a stop at the edge of the forest that had whipped by in such a blur. Sory came to a stop beside her and she noticed he had looped the reins around the horn of his saddle and was riding only with his legs. His broken fingers were cradled against his abdomen, unused and still. 

“This is beautiful,” Kairi said, looking over the vast green field they had come to a stop in. “Would you like to stop for lunch here?”

He didn’t say a word, just gingerly dismounted. He didn’t take Tiger Lily’s reins, just left them looped around the horn so that she could graze on the rich grass. Kairi dismounted as well, gripping Polly’s reins tightly in her hand. Her legs were tight and cramped from sitting sidesaddle. 

“You can let her go,” Sory murmured. “She won’t go astray.” 

“Really?”

He nodded, untied the saddlebag, and handed it over to her. Kairi took out the soft picnic blanket and spread it on the grass. Then, she unpacked everything Franny had tucked away from them. There were some apples for the horses along with a skin of water. For the humans, Franny had packed cold meatball sandwiches, a potato-egg salad, some sweet chocolate cupcakes, and canteen of juice. Then, she sat down and glanced over at Sory. Surprisingly, he was seated at Tiger Lily’s feet, reclined back against her strong forelegs. 

“Um, Sory, are you going to eat with me?” she asked.

“I am not to eat,” he said softly.

Kairi thought of Vlad’s voice, so cruel and harsh— _‘Oh, for heaven's sake, have some bread. Your starvation is pathetic. You're like a slavering dog.’_

“Not to eat?” she asked.

He shook his head, leaned back against the horse's legs, and closed his eyes. “Not to eat,” he repeated. 

Kairi unwrapped the second meatball sandwich and walked over to where Sory was sitting. He didn’t open his eyes even when she knelt beside him. “Well, we have a long day ahead of us. Will you eat?” she asked gently. “Please?”

Those blue eyes slid opened and touched her. “No,” he murmured. “Not to eat.”

“I won’t… tell anyone… if you eat,” she whispered. 

He gently reached out, hesitated, and then put his hands back in his lap. “No.”

“Please.”

“I cannot trust you and I am not to eat.”

Kairi swallowed and whispered, “You really can.”

He shook his head. “Lies…”

“What if I give you a secret of mine?”

His eyes slid open again, but he didn’t say anything to her. 

“I’m pregnant,” she whispered and handed him the meatball sandwich. 

He carefully took it in his broken fingers, unwrapped it, and took a small bite, watching her from the corner of his blue eyes. Kairi sat beside him, eating her own sandwich slowly and keeping a hand pressed to her still-flat stomach. Was is wrong that she had told a ‘dangerous servant’ that she was with child before she told her own husband? She didn’t really know, but she didn’t really care. She only cared that Sory was eating with such a blissful look on his pale face.

After lunch, Sory packed everything back into the saddlebag and remounted Tiger Lily. Kairi clambered back into the saddle, but chose not to sit sidesaddle. For a moment, she worried Sory would eye her exposed thighs where her skirt was yanked up, but he didn’t even spare her a glance. 

“Um, Sory, I was actually hoping to go to the church. I need to talk to the priest about someone.”

Silently, he nudged Tiger Lily forward and Kairi followed after him. She didn’t know where he was leading her, but she followed him regardless. For some reason—especially strange since Vlad had warned her that he was dangerous—she trusted him.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns?

Any more speculation?


	9. Father Graham's Church

Is everybody ready? 

Take a big deep breath.

If you’re wearing a hat, hang on to it!

X X X

Within half an hour, Sory had brought them to a beautiful white chapel where she and Vlad had gotten married only three weeks before. (Kairi was due for her period the week after the marriage consummation and was now two weeks late.) The small graveyard had small orange flowers at the foot of each gravestone. Standing on the steps, sweeping, was the young preacher with the soft silver-white hair and green eyes who had married them. Sory dismounted and stood silently beside Tiger Lily. Kairi leaped down, shuffling in her leather messenger bag as she approached the priest.

The priest calmly leaned on his broom, watching her approach. He looked like a pale angelic reaper guarding the chapel. When she was a few paces from him, he smiled at her winningly and asked, “Can I help you, Mrs. Masterson?”

“You remember me?” she whispered.

“I remember everyone,” he said with a smile. “My name is Father Riku Graham.” 

“Father Graham—”

“Please, call me Father Riku. Father Graham was my father.”

Kairi smiled. “Father Riku, then,” she murmured. “I need to know if you recognize this woman.” She pulled out the photograph of the girl in white and handed it to the priest. 

“Ah, yes. That’s Namine Waters. She married Mr. Masterson in 1872.”

“Namine is Vlad’s wife? Where is she?” Kairi asked.

A shadow passed over Riku’s face and he leaned the broom against the wall of the church. He walked down the stairs, took her hand, and gently led her to a small marble tombstone with a bouquet of soft white lilies whose pollen was as thick hot-pink-powdered as expensive blush. The tombstone read simply:

_Namine Masterson  
1857-1874  
Beloved wife_

“She’s dead?” Kairi whispered.

Riku nodded. 

For a moment, Kairi stared at the gravestone blankly. She didn’t know what exactly she had been expecting when she finally found out who the mysterious girl in white was, but it wasn’t this. She finally produced the cracked framed photograph of the flowered pavilion and party. “What about this?”

“That was the wedding party,” Riku said. 

“Were you there?”

He nodded. “Yes, I married them in 1872. My father was ill that day. It was my first marriage and I was twenty at the time. I remember it clearly and fondly.”

“What was it like?”

“Oh, it was beautiful. Namine was a magnificent beauty and I had never seen Mr. Masterson so happy. He even made her wedding gown himself, spent weeks designing and sewing it.”

Kairi thought of the blue silk she had seen Sory give to Franny. But she and Vlad were already married so there was still no real reason for the silk to be at the house.

“The weather was perfect and the food was exquisite. Namine was so full of life and laughter. Even your,” he tipped his head towards Sory, “unhappy escort was having a good time. Namine danced with him more than I think she danced with her own husband, but I couldn’t say for sure as I left early. Mr. Masterson invited me to stay for the whole party, but I had to get home to my father.”

“But, Namine died two years later,” Kairi whispered, looking back at the headstone. “What happened?”

The priest didn’t have an answer for her. Even though he had been animated and more than happy to speak with her just seconds before, he clammed up tightly. God, it was as if the past was a foreign thing to these people. No one knew anything and, if they did know, no one wanted to talk about it. _‘We do not speak of it… we do not speak of it… The past is not to be spoken of…’_

“Do you mind if I stay for a while?” Kairi asked Father Riku. 

He smiled benevolently, like a painted saint. “Of course not,” he said. “Take all the time you like.” Then, he returned to sweeping the steps of the chapel, whistling while he worked.  
Kairi roamed the small cemetery, not sure exactly what she was looking for. The air was sweet and clear, she could hear Sory whispering to the horses, and Father Riku whistling merrily. The world seemed undeniably happy and wonderful. Then, she came across a second tombstone that rattled her to the core.

_Yuffie Masterson  
1840-1856  
Beloved wife_

“Um, Father Riku,” Kairi called. “What can you tell me about Yuffie Masterson?”

“Not much, I was two when she died.”

“Was she Vlad’s sister?”

“No, she was Vlad’s first wife. Her death was truly tragic.”

“What happened to her?”

“An accident. The carriage horses bolted and she was crushed beneath the wheels or so I heard from my father.”

Kairi swallowed nervously, glancing from the tombstones of Namine and Yuffie Masterson. Vlad had been married twice and both of his brides died young. A chill went down her spine. Did the same fate await her? A short life and tragic unknown death, surrounded by people that would never speak her name again? A knot formed in her throat the size of a stone, choking her. 

“I’d best be going,” she forced out. 

“Of course, Mrs. Masterson. Do come back soon,” the priest said and waved to her as she hurried back to Sory and the horses. 

Kairi mounted quickly and spurred the dapple grey, Polly, into a gallop that left the chapel far behind. Sory kept pace with her silently as the forest whipped past. She only allowed Polly to stop and rest when the Masterson mansion came into view. She patted Polly’s neck, feeling the great beast’s heaving breath. Kairi had pushed the horse to her limits. She dismounted to spare the horse her burden, took the reins, and began to walk. Sory did the same, walking beside her though he still left the reins looped around the saddle horn and the paint, Tiger Lily, simply followed him.

“Namine fell,” he said suddenly.

Kairi turned to look at him, but he was staring straight ahead with rapt attention. “What?”

“She fell.” His voice was thick and sad. “She fell… into the ocean…”

Suddenly, Kairi looked at the cliffs in a new way and her racing terrified heartbeat began to slow. So Vlad didn’t intent to do something horrible to end Kairi’s life quickly. He had just had two strokes of bad luck—his first wife, Yuffie, being crushed beneath a carriage and his second, Namine, happening to be standing at the cliffs when they gave way and she fell to her death. Kairi simply felt bad for her husband. He had simply had rotten luck.

Sory unlocked the paddock and let the horses in. “I will take up the saddlebag,” was all he said before following them in and closing the gate soundly behind him. 

Kairi watching his retreating back for a moment, but then hurried up to the mansion to wash off her sweat and change into something more suited for greeting her husband and less suited for riding horses. She put her pack under the bed, but did not think about Namine or Yuffie anymore. When Vlad arrived home, she didn’t allow him to eat dinner first as he always did. 

Instead, Kairi swept him away to their chambers as soon as he was out of his suit coat. She pushed him down on the bed and began unfastening his trousers, struggling for a moment with his belt. She was naked beneath her silk robe and the feel of the soft cloth rubbing her nipples made her blood boil. 

“Eager, are we, my sweet?” Vlad asked and threaded his fingers through her long red tresses.

“I had a wonderful ride, but I have never been so happy to be home. I missed you,” she told him and then took him into her mouth. 

If he said something in response to that, it came out as a breathy aroused groan. Once she had made him hard and ready, she got on her hands and knees and begged for him to take her. He didn’t need more persuasion than the sight of her dripping pink slit. He dove into her and took her softly at first, moving so slowly that she rocked hard against him, trying to make him go faster, but he kept up his teasing until she was practically sobbing with her need for him. Only then, did he take her as hard and fast as she wished. 

When she came, she screamed out his name.

… 

Kairi’s pleasure screamed rocked the mansion, echoing in the empty halls. Sory was standing beside Franny in the kitchen and she saw him wince from the corner of her eye, but continued unpacking the saddlebag as if she hadn’t seen anything. Outside, night had fallen like a blanket across the land. 

Then, softly, like a confession, Sory whispered, “I ate, Franny.”

She didn’t turn to face him, but felt sick to her stomach. “What would you like me to say?” she murmured.

He looked away. “I don’t know,” he whispered.

“Why don’t you go down?” 

“I don’t… want to…”

“You have to.”

“But—”

“Do you want it to happen again?” she asked sharply, harshly, and immediately felt horrible because the poor boy shrank back as if she had burned him. “I’m sorry,” Franny whispered to him. “But you know you have to go down. Why wouldn’t you want to?”

Sory looked like he wanted to say something. His pale scarred throat was working furiously, but he didn’t tell Franny that Kairi knew about not only Namine, but Yuffie as well. Wordlessly, he turned away from the elderly servant and hid downstairs in his basement prison. The water was dripping in the sink, tempting him. He turned on the water, cupped his hands, and took a long drink. He sat on his mattress, looking at his fingers. Franny thought they were healed, but wasn’t yet willing to remove the bandages. Now, the bandages were ice-cold, making his entire body chilled. Then, he curled up on his mattress, focusing on breathing. In and out, in and out, like the ocean, like the waves washing upon the shore, in and out, in and out.

X X X

A short chapter, but weighty. Lots of things for everyone to consider now and speculate on. 

It’s very difficult and funny to think of Riku as a priest, don’t you think?

Questions, comments, concerns?

Speculations?

REVIEWS!


	10. The Storm and the Boat Master

Since the dates are staring to confuse everyone, here’s a little timeline:

Everyone’s current ages:  
-Vlad, 48  
-Kairi, 16  
-Sory, 14  
-Riku, 26

1830: Vladimir Masterson’s birth  
-1805-Dimitri Masterson, age 25  
-1813-Anastasia Romanov, age 17  
-1822-they wed

1840: Yuffie Kisaragi’s birth

1852: Riku Graham’s birth

1853: Vlad, age 23, take over the Masterson Boutique

1854: Vlad, age 24, weds first child-bride, Yuffie Kisaragi, age 14

1856: Yuffie dies in tragic carriage accident   
-(Vlad, 26)

1857: Namine Waters’ birth  
-(Vlad, 27) 

1862: Kairi Hart’s birth  
-(Vlad, 32)

1864: Sory Masterson’s birth (remember, Vlad is his uncle)  
-(Vlad, 34)

1872: March, Sory comes to the Masterson Estate at age 8  
-June, Vlad, age 42, weds second child-bride, Namine Waters, age 15  
-photograph of child Sory and “girl in white” taken

1874: Namine dies

1878: Vlad weds third child-bride, Kairi Hart, age 16 (current time)

X X X

There were ugly black storm clouds hanging over the ocean, jet black, boiling with the threat of rain. Franny kept everyone inside—cooking and cleaning the mansion. After Kairi saw Vlad off to work with a kiss the next morning, she went to the library and sat at his desk with clean white paper and a pen laid out before her. For a little while, she sat there, smiling to herself for no apparent reason. Then, she took up the pen and began her letter to her mother.

_Dearest Mother,_

_I’m so sorry I didn’t write sooner, but I’ve been so busy with my new life. Vlad is a lovely man. He is very kind to me, dotes on me, and allows me to have whatever I like. He owns a dress-making shop in town—Masterson Boutique—and he even gave be a tour. His office has the most spectacular view of the town. His mansion is amazing. It’s built on the cliffs and has a private beach. I have never seen something so big in my life! He even has a library. I’m writing my letter to you in it right now. Oh, I wish you could see it._

_I’ve found out the most horrible thing. I want to cry just thinking about it. Vlad has been married twice before me, but both his wives perished tragically. I feel so incredibly sorry for him and intend to be very careful so he does not have to suffer a third loss of someone he cares for._

_But, I have good news as well. I’m pregnant! And yes, I am positive. My period is two weeks late and counting. Our marriage is now solid since I know that I can give him heirs, but I haven’t told him yet. I’m unsure of how to go about doing it. Should I just blurt it out or is there a special way to tell him? Or should I simply wait until the sickness and my swollen belly alert him?_

_I have one other strange thing to report, but I don’t want you to worry. Promise me you won’t. There is a strange servant here. His name is Sory and he’s… beautiful but also very damaged. He has a lot of scars and he lives in the basement and it looks as if he’s written on the walls with his blood. But just yesterday, I went for a ride and found him at the stable and he was so gentle with the horses. They really seemed to love him. I want to know what’s happened to him, but I’m also afraid. I feel like whatever happened to him has broken him and I am afraid of it breaking me. Is that wrong of me, mother, or should I try to help him no matter the cost to myself?_

_Your loving daughter,_

_Kairi_

Content that her letter accurately summed up her new life, she waited for the ink to dry, then folded the creamy paper into thirds, and gave it a kiss before tucking it into the envelope. Then, she wrote her old address on the front and sealed it. She tucked it into her bodice for safekeeping until she could give it to Franny to be mailed. 

Kairi was just descending the stairs, holding up her skirt with one hand and the railing with the other, when the first crack of thunder split the sky and the power abruptly went out. Blinded by the sudden darkness, she stopped walking, gripping the railing tightly with both hands. She thought of the precious cargo she was carrying inside and did not want to fall down the stairs under any circumstances. The thunder boomed again so loud that it felt as if it was directly next to her ear. Her heart began to pound.

Suddenly, there was a banshee shriek and a door slammed open. Kairi heard footsteps racing up the stairs towards her, but she couldn’t see anyone. Then, a warm slender body slammed into her full force and she toppled backwards. Two arms braced themselves on either side of her waist and she felt heat seeping into her body. She could hear ragged desperate breathing.

There was a flash of lightning, pale silver light streaking in through the many windows, and Kairi immediately recognized Sory. Seconds later, a peel of thunder crashed through the house. Sory let out a cry and suddenly clutched her, trembling and making small animal sounds, like she had seen him do to Franny. Her heart went out to him and she wrapped her arms around his shaking body. Was he afraid of the storm?

“It’s okay,” she whispered and rubbed his back gingerly. 

“Who’s up there? Kairi, is that you?” Franny appeared at the bottom of the staircase with a candle. The pale yellow light cast a ghoulish glow on her face. The dim light fell across the pair and Franny let out a gasp and put her hand to her mouth. “Sory? Oh god, has he hurt you?” She quickly came up the stairs towards them and knelt beside them, putting her hand on Kairi’s shoulder. “Are you alright?”

“I’m fine,” Kairi told the elderly woman. “But I think Sory is afraid of the storm.”

“Probably,” she whispered and gently pulled the two apart, helping Kairi to her feet and letting Sory pull himself up. She couldn’t risk touching him and having him pin her against the wall with Kairi right there, watching. “It’s Franny. Come to me.” Surprisingly, he refused her. On those rare occasions that Sory wanted a touch, he always came to Franny, but now he was pushing her away. 

Instead, Sory reached out, arms wide and desperate looking, for Kairi. Equally surprising, she took him into her arms readily, cradling him against her breasts. She put her hands through the cool of his chocolate hair, trying to soothe him. “Can we go downstairs?” she asked Franny, gently adjusting Sory so that he was at her side and she could walk. “I’m a little concerned with being on the stairs and Sory being afraid of the storm.”

Franny nodded and walked down the stairs, leading them with the candle. She settled them at the servants’ table in the kitchen where she had already gathered most of the other servants. Kairi had never seen them all and she studied each face. They were all staring at her, maybe not at her per say, but at Sory. She sat down, but he didn’t let go of her. He simply slid to his knees and clutched her around the waist with his face buried in her lap. Kairi stroked his back and hair gently, wondering what had brought this on. 

“Is this everyone?” Kairi asked Franny.

Franny shook her head. “No, I can’t find the gardener, Lena, anywhere. I’m afraid she might have gone out into the storm to cover the roses.”

“We should go out and look for her,” Kairi said. “The storm’s not that bad yet.”

Franny looked about to say something, but the boom of thunder and fiery flash of lightning spoke for her. “I can’t ask anyone to go out into the storm.”

Kairi blinked at her, looked down at Sory, and then said, “That’s alright. I’ll go.”

“No!” 

But Kairi had already gently pried Sory off of her and was standing at the back door, preparing to go out. 

“Kairi, you can’t go out there.”

Kairi looked back over her shoulder, twilight-colored eyes shining in the flashing light. “And you can’t stop me,” she said plainly. Then, she pulled open the door and stepped out into the storm. The wind tore all her red hair out of her face and blew her dress out like a billowing cloud. 

“Kairi! Kairi, get back here! You cannot go out in this storm!” Franny shouted from the threshold of the door. 

Suddenly, Sory’s head snapped up and he let out a cry. He charged out the door into the storm after Kairi. 

Franny was left standing there, staring out after them. “Get back here! Both of you, get back in this house, right now!” It was then that she realized she had no power to stop either of them. “Get back here! You cannot be out in this storm!”

But nothing happened. 

No one got off the cross. 

No one came back to the house. 

No one came back through the slanting rain except the gardener, Lena, sopping wet and smiling sheepishly. “I’m sorry. I had to cover the roses or the storm would damage them,” she said. “What’s wrong, Franny? You’re as white as a ghost.”

“Nothing, Lena, nothing,” Franny said and gently wrapped Lena in her arms. “I’m glad you’re alright. Come in here.” Then, she closed the door, but stood at it, looking out into the downpour. She could see neither Sory, nor Kairi, just a small smoky whiteness that she hadn’t seen in four years. “Please, come back,” she whispered. 

…

A few seconds after venturing out into the storm, Kairi was regretting it. She was soaked to the bone, shivering, and the rain was stinging her exposed skin. Her hair stuck in her face, blinding her more than the rain. She could hear Franny yelling, but chose to ignore her. 

“Lena!” she shouted. 

Through the mist, she saw a figure, running. 

“Wait, Lena! This way, the house is this way!” she called and began to chase after her. 

The ocean was lashing wildly, wine-dark, boiling. 

“Lena!”

There was a sound next to her ear, a whisper, but she couldn’t make out what was said. Kairi whirled around, but no one was there. 

“Lena?”

“I didn’t fall.” 

Kairi whirled around and found herself face-to-face with the girl in white, Namine Waters, Vlad’s second child-bride. She was porcelain-ghost-pale with a pretty face framed by white-blonde-platinum tresses and she was wearing a white silk dress that hugged her curves and didn’t appear to be wet regardless of the storm. The only color on her was her beautiful sky-blue eyes. She was only there a moment, but then she was gone. 

“Namine?” Kairi called out. She felt cold and it wasn’t because of the storm anymore. “Namine?”

_‘I didn’t fall.’_

Suddenly, the raging downpour seemed to stop. The rain slowed entirely and the wind stopped blowing. It was as if Kairi was caught in a dream. Standing at the edge of the cliff was Namine in her white silk gown, hands folded neatly beneath her abdomen. “I didn’t fall,” she murmured. “I couldn’t leave him. Find out why I jumped and you will know everything.” 

“Jumped?!” Kairi repeated, horrified. 

Namine smiled serenely and then simply fell backwards over the edge of the cliffs, arms spread as if to fly on her way down. After a few seconds, she started screaming and the screams just went on forever until they blended with the sound of the ocean. The ocean was screaming.

“No!” Kairi shouted and started running towards the cliffs. The rain slammed down on her in full force, practically drilling her into the ground. She rushed towards the end of the cliffs, staggering beneath the driving weight of the storm. 

Lightning speared through the black sky like the pearly white fangs of some great beast and thunder rocked the earth. Kairi could feel the cliffs trembling beneath her feet, but it didn’t stop her from running to the edge. 

All common sense had left her. 

She didn’t remember that she had been standing on Namine’s graze, reading her tombstone, just the day before and that the white girl who had just plunged over the cliffs had to be a ghost. She ran to the edge, lying on her belly and peering over the edge on the off chance that the fallen girl had managed to grab a hold of the cliff. But no one was dangling from the sharp black stones—fallen bride or ghost girl or otherwise. There was only the wine-dark churning ocean breaking on the sharp rocks below. 

“Namine!” she shouted down. 

It would be so easy for a small white body to vanish beneath the undulating waves. Kairi crawled backwards on her elbows from the edge of the cliff, staggered to her feet, and ran at top speed for the narrow path that led to the beach. But when she reached the stripe of grey-white sand with the lashing waves washing up over the beach, the sight that greeted her was neither a drowned body nor a porcelain-pale specter. 

Instead, dragging his tiny sailboat with the sails already rolled up neatly on the yardarm, was a shirtless sun-browned young man. He was just as soaked as Kairi, golden-blonde hair plastered to his head. Finally, he got his little boat up onto the shore as far as he could, ran onto the beach, wrapped the rope around one of the shaking palm trees a few times, and then heaved his little boat completely onto the shore using the tree as a pulley system. Then, he dashed back to his sailboat and turned it carefully over on its side. He shimmied carefully under the shelter of his overturned boat.

“Who are you?!” Kairi shouted over the storm, but his blonde head did not reappear. Gathering up her soaked skirts, she slid around through the sand until she reached the little boat, exquisitely titled Sea Bride. She got on her knees and peered through the space between the side of the boat and the beach. 

Two big sea-blue orbs stared back at her, glowing faintly in the dim light, surprised at first, but then concerned. “You came down from the mansion, right? What are you doing here?” His voice was smooth and soft, edged with emotion. “Quick, come under here. Get out of the storm before you catch your death.” His hands were incredibly warm wrapped around her wrists, rough and sandy, and towing her under the shelter of his boat. 

Kairi found herself stretched out on the cold wet sand beside him, soaking up the impossible heat coming off of his body. She put her hands on his bare chest and pushed him back, feeling uncomfortable, but he only smiled at her and her apprehension washed away. He had a sweet, innocent, honest smile that immediately put her at ease. 

“Who are you?” she whispered because he was so close that she didn’t need to shout. 

“Roxas. Roxas Kisaragi.”

“What an unusual name.”

“It’s the name I made for myself.”

“Made for yourself?”

He smiled, showing perfect white teeth. “I couldn’t keep my old name. I chose this one.”

“What are you doing here?” Kairi asked after a long moment of silence passed between them. 

“I had to take shelter from the storm. I promise I’ll be gone as soon as the storm breaks. No need to worry,” he said kindly but with vague sadness, as if he was used to people turning him out. His eyes strayed from her face to the sky outside the shelter of the overturned boat. “And it will break soon. I’d say this storm will blow over within a few minutes.”

“A few minutes?” Kairi repeated incredulously. “Looks at it! I wouldn’t be surprised if it lasted a week!”

Roxas smiled at her secretively. “I know the sea and the sky better than I know myself. Trust me. It will blow over in a few minutes.” Then, he pointed one brown finger behind her head at the stormy sky beyond the boat. “Trust me…”

She turned over on the sand, looking out at the churning ocean and the dark stormy sky. For some reason, all thoughts of Namine had left her mind. As Roxas had promised, within minutes, the raging storm had passed. Only a light drizzle and soft exhausted breeze remained. Roxas put his back against the boat and heaved it upright again, standing easily.

Kairi sat up and stared at him. Her clothes were even partially dried from the heat of his body soaking into her. “How did you know that?”

“I’ve lived on the sea my whole life.” Roxas, on the other hand, appeared completely dry already. “I know it rather well.” 

Then, he slogged through the wet sand, untied his boat, coiling the rope from his hand to his elbow expertly and tied it neatly off, and then jogged back to the foaming surf. He tossed the coiled rope into his boat, pushed it out into the surf, and clambered into it without so much as wetting his toes. Taking out the oars and setting them in their locks, he waved to Kairi and began to row himself out into the sea.

“Wait,” she called, cupping her hands around her mouth. “What do you do?”

“I work on the sea. I have a stand in town if you ever need to find me,” Roxas called back good-naturedly, but the expression on his face said he never expected to see her again. He looked like someone who had been catching nothing but bad waves and storm his entire life—turned away, kicked out, alone on the lonely sea. He put up the sail after a moment and the faint breeze easily bore him away like a feather on the wind. 

Until he was a speck on the horizon, Kairi watched Roxas. 

Then, she heard faint footsteps on the sand behind her. Sory’s silent presence appeared beside her. He was soaked to the skin, looking paler than ever and a little bit sick. His chocolate hair was night-dark when it was wet and he looked like a ghost, like someone who had drowned, so incredibly pale and almost translucent with his drenched clothing clinging to his twig-thin body. For a moment, Kairi had the urge to reach out and touch him, just to be sure he wasn’t an apparition, but for some reason she didn’t. She felt as if there was an iron wall between them, something she could neither penetrate nor touch. 

Namine’s words came back to her, soft as if blown on the breeze. _‘I didn’t fall. I couldn’t leave him. Find out why I jumped and you will know everything.’_

“She didn’t fall,” Kairi whispered, unaware that she had spoken aloud. 

“I know,” Sory whispered. His voice was so soft that it sounded more like a sigh, like a cry, like a breath. “She jumped…”

X X X

Now, I know that you know that Yuffie’s last name is Kisaragi, but before you all jump to conclusions (which I know you will!) about Roxas Kisaragi, think that he might be her brother, her cousin, her son, her uncle, her anything! Rawr! 

Questions, comments, concerns?


	11. Namine's White Tome

*uncontrollable laughter* I’m watching America’s Funniest Home Videos and I just have to share! This guy is giving a speech at his parent’s anniversary and there’s a tiny praying mantis sitting on the microphone, trying to get his nose. Finally, it managed to jump off and it crawled all over his face. He had a little heckler! It’s so incredibly hilarious and cute.

X X X

Kairi’s heart exploded into her throat like it was trying to escape and she whirled to face Sory, stopping dead in her tracks. “What do you mean you know she jumped?” she demanded, hating how high her voice was getting. “You told me she fell into the ocean!” She was flailing her arms around, gesturing wildly, flapping her arms like some kind of great bird trying to take off, arms spread like Namine’s as she dropped over the sea-cliffs with her feathery white dress fluttering around her. 

He flicked his sky-blue eyes in her direction and stopped beside her, but he didn’t say anything. He lowered his face to the ground, staring at the soggy grass and sand with rapt attention. He hid his face behind his soaking wet bangs, shadowing those eyes of his. “I knew,” he said softly. “I’m sorry.”

A chill went through Kairi’s blood and her breath caught in her chest, rattling there like a bird caught in the house, shuddering and shuddering against the glass as it tried to escape. He had what appeared to be a small speech impediment. When he said ‘sorry,’ it came out sounding just like his name. Soar-y. 

“Sory?” she whispered. 

“Yes, I’m sorry,” he repeated and then started walking away from her. 

For a moment, she stared at his retreating back, at the translucent white shirt clinging to his narrow shoulders, at his hunched nervous posture. 

Sory.

Soar-y.

Sorry.

What kind of name was that? 

Her heart began to pound, but she wasn’t entirely sure why. 

Then, the mansion appeared over the crest of the hill. The lights were back on and Franny, looking rather grey and nervous, was standing in the doorway with a stack of white towels visible on the table behind her. Sory reached the door first, took a towel, put it over his dripping head, and walked quickly away to his basement room. Kairi entered behind him and chose to ignore the towel in favor of following after him, but Franny caught her by the bodice of the back of her dress. 

“Where do you think you’re going? You’ll catch your death if you go around soaked to the skin,” Franny snapped and dragged her back. Then, she slapped the towel over Kairi’s hair and began to roughly towel her dry. “Goodness, you’re already practically dry,” Franny muttered almost to herself.

“I need to talk to Sory,” Kairi insisted, brushing the elderly servant away. 

Franny gripped her wrist. “You cannot.”

Kairi jerked away and threw the damp towel in Franny’s face. “You cannot stop me, Franny. While Vlad is at work, I am master of this house and you are still a servant.” Her voice was incredibly biting and for a moment, she felt bad for being so cruel to the woman, but she just needed to talk to Sory regardless of what is cost her. Leaving the stunned woman behind, she hurried down the hallway after Sory and threw open the door to his basement room, descending once again into Hell.

Sory was lying on his sagging filthy mattress, shivering and still soaked to the skin. The towel was lying at the bottom of the stairs, seemingly unused other than the small use he had given it while he walked to his room. Kairi almost tripped on it, but caught herself on the wall. Then, she staggered over to Sory and made the grave mistake of touching Sory when he didn’t wish to be touched. Her hand closed over his shoulder, felt the jagged bones and sinew, and then she felt nothing but the cold wall against her back.

Sory’s forearm was against her throat, cutting off her air. She clutched at his arm and pushed on his chest, but he was like a statue—completely cold and stone and immovable. His eyes were like twin sparks, burning with some unknown emotion. Was it… fear or rage? His face was very close to hers, so close that she could smell the sweetness of his moist breath on her mouth. 

“You mustn’t touch me,” he whispered and eased up on her throat a little.

Kairi sucked in a gasping breath. She wanted to apologize, but she wondered what that would sound like to him. Instead, she forced out, “How did you know that Namine jumped?”

That simple question seemed to take the wind from his sails. He pulled his arms close to his body, hugging himself tightly as if that would somehow keep him together. He made a sound of agony deep in his chest that sounded like his heart was breaking, like something was coming loose of its moorings inside him. Then, slowly, like wet paper, he crumpled.

Kairi knelt beside him, but was careful not to touch him again. She could already feel the bruises forming on her throat. “How did you know that she jumped?”

Like a marionette on strings, he got to his feet and staggered to his sagging little mattress. From beneath it, he produced a small little book bound in soft white linen. The cover was dirty and bloodstained, from his hands touching it Kairi supposed as she eyes the filth of the basement that had undeniably seeped into his porcelain-pale flesh. With trembling hands, he handed her the tiny tome and whispered brokenly, “I found it. It’s hers.”

Kairi gingerly took the dirty white tome from him. “It’s Namine’s?”

He nodded and his eyes were sparkling. “Don’t show him,” he whispered. “He’ll take it away from me. He’ll take her away from me.”

“You mean Vlad?”

He winced as if struck. 

“I won’t, you have my word. May I take this?”

He trembled violently, reaching out for the small book. 

“I’ll bring it back to you. I will.”

He met her eyes and then looked abruptly away. He bit his lip, worrying it until she thought it would begin to bleed, but finally nodded. Then, wordlessly, he returned to his bed, lay down, and began to tremble. Kairi walked over to his bed, tucked the small book beneath her arm to keep it out of her way, took his threadbare little blanket from where it was crumpled at the foot of his mattress, and pulled it up over him. He didn’t say anything, but he did stop trembling. Kairi closed the door over softly behind her and was relieved to find the hallway deserted. 

Since Vlad was due home shortly, she went to the library and hid the small tome in the most obvious yet perfect place—among other books. She stashed it behind the selection of poetry, centering Mary Howitt’s collective works directly in front of it as a mark. She vowed to read it later that night, when Vlad and the rest of the house were asleep. 

Then, she rushed back to her chambers, struggled out of her wet gown, took a quick bath to get the chill from her skin, and dressed in a fresh dry gown of thick warm knitted cotton. By the time she came downstairs, Vlad was shrugging out of his suit coat. He asked her where Franny was, but Kairi honestly didn’t know. 

…

Finally, Vlad began to snore beside her. Kairi got out of bed, shrugged into her robe, put her feet into her slippers, and crept from their chambers like a misplaced shadow. The library was chilly and uninviting, but Kairi only bundled her robe tighter around herself. She dug the Namine’s white tome from behind the other books and sat down right there with her back against the bookshelf, in case she had to hide the book quickly. 

Eagerly, she opened the book and found a shocking sentence: Property of Namine Waters-Masterson. Private. Do not read on pain of death! This was Namine’s diary. Kairi quickly leafed through it, examining the entries. They were sparse and ranged from March, 1872 to January, 1874, so from just before her marriage to Vlad up to her death, of course. Kairi leafed backwards to the first entry and began reading. 

_**March 17, 1872** _

_My husband-to-be seems to be a very charming man. He was already showered me with gifts—a pretty dress of white watered-silk with ornate silver embroidery, a book of poems by my favorite Mary Howitt, and this little tome to write my private thoughts and feelings in. If this is how he treats me before we are even wed, I can only imagine how wonderful my married life will be._

_I have told my father that I accept this man and that he may betroth me without fear of my imminent escape. (When we were fighting just the other night about my betrothal, I swore to him that I would run away before I married someone I did not like.) My mother always said I was as strong-willed and stubborn as a mule and I have no doubt that she was right. I miss her so very much. I know my father only wants the best for me, but I wish she hadn’t died so suddenly, forcing him to betroth me because no one was home to take care of me. I am only 15, after all._

_I will try not to have any hard feelings towards Vlad because of my situation. After all, he does seem to be a lovely man unworthy of my reproach._

_**March 19, 1872** _

_When I told Vlad that I accepted his proposal, I had never seen such a happy man in my entire life. He hugged me so tightly and then gave me the softest kiss on the cheek I have ever received. I am glad to marry him just next month. I am going to be a June bride!_

_Today there was nothing but good news all around. Vlad’s young nephew has come to live with us. I cannot tell you what I think of him just yet though. He is a strange child with such old and damaged eyes. I feel like he has been through too much._

_Vlad tells me his parents were worthless people. His father, Dirk, of the Masterson line by birth, was the family’s prodigal son. To make a long story short for the size of these pages, he visited a street whore by the name of Rose-Red each night and grew very fond of her. He then bought her from her from the gang that owned her services and took a cut of her wages and brought her to live with Vlad and himself in the mansion. She gave birth to a child that was not his soon after—Sory—and Dirk, feeling incredibly betrayed, drank himself to death. Guilty, Rose-Red threw herself into the ocean._

_Vlad, who had never liked his bastard non-related nephew, sent him away. It turns out, this was not something he should have done. Sory suffered a great many things at the hands of the people Vlad offered his services as an indentured servant to. I have not yet heard the whole story, but I am not entirely sure I wish to. He is so thin, practically skin and bones, if that. I have never seen someone so emaciated. He has so many scars on his young body and a fear of touch that only forced-upon women should know._

_And he is only eight years old._

_It is very sad._

_But Vlad seemed repentant for sending him away and inadvertently forcing him to suffer all these terrible things. He is doing all he can to make his poor nephew comfortable and safe. I plan to do all I can to help him restore his nephew to whatever he was before these tragedies struck him. Wish me luck!_

_**April 13, 1872** _

_It is Friday the thirteenth, but today does not seem particularly unlucky thus far. This morning, Sory, who had been as quiet as a kicked stray cat came to me while I was reading in the library and sat silently at my feet without saying a word. For a while, I put aside my book and tried to talk to him, but he ignored me completely. Or, if he was paying attention, he hid it frighteningly well. So, on a whim, I begin reading to him aloud my favorite poem—the Spider and the Fly by Mary Howitt. I’m not sure if he enjoyed it, but he did turn to look at me and watched my face with rapt attention._

_Such a strange, hurt child._

_But I am happy that he came to me and enjoyed my reading._

_**April 19, 1872** _

_Each day this week, I have set aside some time to sit in the library and read, and each day Sory comes and sits at my feet and I read aloud to him. He never seems to care what I’m reading. It’s almost as if he just likes to hear my voice, but today was different. Today, he took a book off the shelf, brought it to me, put it in my lap, and then resumed his usual position at my feet. He didn’t say anything when I asked him if he wanted me to read it to him._

_It’s as if he doesn’t want me to know that he enjoys my reading._

_He’s so incredibly secretive. I wonder if that’s because of what he’s been through—the torment he has endured for so long._

_Either way, I will never hurt him and I have told him so, but he does not seem to believe me. So today, I simply read to him a passage of a book I am certain he did not understand as it was the Encyclopedia of all things. I am hoping tomorrow he brings me another book to read to him, but I also hope it is not the Encyclopedia._

_**May 1, 1872** _

_Next month, I am to be married to Vladimir Masterson._

_I am both excited and nervous. Excited because I will finally get to feel what it is like to be with a man, something I have wondered about since I was old enough to read about it in books. Nervous because… last night, sweet Sory came stealing into my room so quietly that he did not wake me, but he was there curled up on my floor like a small kitten when I woke up the next morning. I am afraid that once I begin to share a bed with Vlad, he will not with to allow Sory this small pleasure._

_I also hope that someday Sory will crawl into my bed with me, rather than sleeping on the cold floor._

_Yesterday, I was too tired to write when I returned to the mansion because Vlad, Sory, and I went on the most magnificent ride. The fine horses Vlad has are all beautiful palominos, so pale that they look like clouds. Sory took a certain liking to the horses and they to him. It was almost as if he could whisper exactly what he wanted into their ears and they would do it without question. He easily jumped the stream that Vlad had to get off and guide our horses through to follow. It was rather funny._

_Sory unintentionally grinds Vlad’s gears._

_On the first of June, I am to be married!_

_**June 2, 1872** _

_Yesterday was the best day of my life! I became Namine Masterson!_

_Vlad had everything perfectly planned. We were married in the flowered pavilion on his private beach and had a grand reception afterwards. The priest, Father Riku Graham, had the most lovely fairy-tale voice that made my vows seem like a dream. I wore the most beautiful white silk gown with summery lace sleeves and only afterwards did I find that Vlad had it made special for me in his shop just to my tastes. I told him I would never take it off and he only smiled seductively at me. The perfume of roses and sweet cake and sweet wine and Sory’s freshly-wet ocean-scented hair will stay with me until the end of my days, I swear._

_I stood for a picture with Vlad and I smiled so long that my face hurt, but it was worth it to have my happiness captured so perfectly. Even more perfect was that Sory had been standing unknowingly in the background, looking so sweet and innocent and so much like the child I wish he would be. I plan to put the photograph on my nightstand so I may look at it each night before I go to sleep._

_I will not bore you with the details of my night with Vlad, but I will say that it was everything I imagined it would be._

_I have never been so happy in my life._

_Oh, I must go now, little book. Sory is standing silently in the threshold, just watching me and holding a book against his chest. I know he wants me to read to him and I most gladly will drop everything I am doing to do that for him._

_**June 15, 1872** _

_Today, while Vlad was at work, Sory and I took the carriage into town to visit him as a surprise, but he was so busy that we had to entertain ourselves some other way. So, we went to visit his mother, who lives in a small home on the outskirts of town. Beautiful Anastasia was more than happy to greet us and Dimitri has been dead for years. I never had the pleasure of meeting him and for that I am grateful. From what I have heard, he was a terrible man—cruel to both his son and his wife._

_We spent most of the day talking with Anya and I even read aloud to them from the book I had brought. Then, Anya told us a fantastical story of a lovely young woman with dark hair who was so graceful she fancied herself ‘the greatest ninja of all time!’ I almost wish Yuffie was real so that I could meet her, but sadly she is only a story in Anya’s mind.  
Vlad came to fetch us at the end of the day and the four of us went out for a lovely supper of fresh pink salmon, greens, and soft buttered bread. For dessert, Vlad and I shared a tiramisu while Anya and Sory split a piece of Death by Chocolate cake. I have a feeling Anya let Sory eat most of it for his face never looked so happy and content. _

_When we returned home, Vlad asked me not to encourage my mother to tell her stories, but he wouldn’t tell me why._

_**August 5, 1872** _

_I caught Vlad threatening and throttling Sory. He had him pushed against the wall of the foyer and there was a broken vase on the ground—something expensive and imported from India. The poor child’s face was completely terrified. Yes, I understand that Sory broke something, but if this is the way he treats his nephew, how am I to expect him to treat his own children when I bear him sons?_

_So, I shouted at Vlad, took Sory by the hand, and we went on a long ride through the woods together. I asked him what happened and he said simply that he had tripped and knocked the vase off its stand. I will give him that he never makes excuses. Whenever I ask him something, the truth is always the first things that come out of his mouth._

_When we returned, Vlad apologized profusely to both of us, but Sory looked unconvinced. I can’t rightly blame him so I sat in his room with him for a while, reading to him, and he asked me for the first thing ever. He asked me to teach him to read. I have only been so happy once before—on my wedding day._

_**October 31, 1872** _

_It is All Hallows Eve and I am very excited for our costume party tonight. I hope out costumes are enough to chase away the spirits of the dead. Especially since we live so close to the ocean where I’m sure many have drowned. (I read in one of my books that people that die in the ocean are granted pity by the gods and given a chance to drift in limbo between the worlds, continuing their lives. Interesting, yes?)_

_Sory has wrapped himself up in a lot of white linen as a mummy and has gone lurching around the house. He is almost acting like a child again—smiling and laughing readily. But he is an incredibly bright child. It took me little more than a month to teach him to read. Now, when we sit in his bed at night, he reads to me instead._

_Vlad has dressed himself in a lot of black leather and I am not entirely certain of what he is to be. I, on the other hand, am using the party as an excuse to wear my wedding gown again though the bouquet of white roses I bought earlier in the week have become quite withered. Perhaps I shall be a dead bride. Haha!_

_**January 1, 1873** _

_I cannot believe I forgot my silly diary when we left for our trip._

_Anyway, I had the most wonderful Christmas with Vlad. He treated me to a wonderful trip to the islands where it was warm even in the dead of winter here. I wanted to bring Sory, but Vlad insisted this trip be only for us and that we would bring something back for Sory._

_So, I brought back a great palm tree that he has been nurturing in the basement where it’s warm until he can plant it on the beach come summer. He was so happy to see me that I almost felt sorry for leaving him, but I think I made up for it by telling him everything I could remember about our trip._

_He read to me the letters he had written to me in his sloppy handwriting while I was gone, but he had been unable to send them. They were full of love and sorrow. He missed me so much. I spent the night in his bed with him, holding him tightly against me and forsaking Vlad._

_I never realized that he had such nightmares. He kept waking in the night, rousing himself with the sounds of his own cries, covered in cold sweat and goose bumps, but he would not tell me what he dreamed about no matter how many times I asked. It was almost as if he wanted to protect me from his dreams, as if they were that horrible. Even after I shared one of my own nightmares, he still would not budge._

_**February 14, 1873** _

_I discovered the strangest thing in the back of the closet today while I was cleaning our chambers—a pale blue silk dress. It held it up to myself, thinking it might be a present-in-the making, but it was impossibly strange and would never fit me. The chest was wide and square and completely flat with a narrow waist and long straight skirt, as if designed for a woman with a man’s figure. Maybe the sweet but hideous cook downstairs? I couldn’t be sure and it didn’t particularly trouble me._

_That night, Vlad had Sory take me from the house for an hour and when I returned, the bedroom was full of candlelight and with rose petals scattered on the cool silk sheets. He made love in a frenzied way, as if to remind me that I had not born him an heir yet, but he said nothing. Maybe it was all in my head?_

_**March 28, 1873** _

_Today on the private beach I met a shocking young man who lives on the sea in a small cloud-like sailboat. His name is Roxas Kisaragi. He gave me a beautiful white shell. Even Sory seemed to like him, but maybe that was because Roxas took him for a ride on his boat. I was wearing a dress that doesn’t take kindly to water and chose to stay on the beach, waving to them. I had never seen Sory looking so happy and laughing so hard as when he was out on the waves._

_I think the ocean does something wonderful to people—it smoothes out their rough edges._

_At the end of the day, I invited Roxas to the house for supper, but he declined. He said he had someplace to go. I asked if I could see him again and he looked surprised, but smiled and told me where I could find his little stand where he sold fish and shells. I promised to visit him, but I wasn’t ready to leave the beach. Sory had to pull me away._

_**June 1, 1873** _

_I cannot believe I have been married to Vlad for a full year! I’ll have to think of some way to surprise him when he comes home from work tonight._

_**July 4, 1873** _

_It’s my birthday! I am seventeen!_

_As a present, Vlad gave me the most beautiful choker. It’s a diamond with a silver rose inlaid deep inside the jewel. I plan to never take it off. I will die and be buried with this broach around my neck. That is how much I love it!_

_**December 27, 1873** _

_I couldn’t find Sory anywhere today. It troubled me greatly. Could he have fallen into the sea and become one of those lingering spirits I read about? The basement door was locked, which was strange, but since Sory had already planted his palm on the beach and Vlad had been talking about locking the room to keep the servants from his wine, I didn’t think too much about it._

_**December 28, 1873** _

_Sory turned up the next morning. He looked tired and gaunt and even paler than usual. I asked him where he had been yesterday and he said, ‘Here.’ I knew he wouldn’t have lied to me and figured he was getting sick and had fallen asleep in the stable with the horses he loved so dearly or something equally silly. I tucked him into bed that night, but he didn’t want me to read with him so I went to bed with Vlad, who held me rather tightly as if afraid I would escape._

_**December 29, 1873** _

_I can’t find that silly misshapen blue silk dress anywhere and asked Vlad where it had gone. He looked startled, shocked even, and told me he had taken it to work to be hemmed. I don’t know why, but I felt as if he was lying to me._

_**December 30, 1873** _

_This morning, Sory had a big bruise on his face. I asked him what had happened, but he denied me. Instead, I demanded we play a game. I would tell him one of my secrets if he would tell me one of his._

_I told him that my mother had been sick, dying, wasting away so slowly, but I was happy that she was dead now. I was happy she wasn’t suffering anymore._

_For a long moment, he stared at me and then lowered his face and confessed to me that his name was Sora. Sora with an A instead of a Y. It’s the most beautiful name I had ever heard and I told him so and asked why he had been going by Sory for so long. He told me that Vlad didn’t like his name._

_I didn’t understand._

_**December 31, 1873** _

_I asked Vlad why he had changed Sora’s beautiful name to something as vague and unhappy-sounding as Sory. Vlad only looked angry and demanded how I learned that. I told him that Sora had told me and he stormed from the room. I wasn’t worried until I heard the door lock from the outside. Then, I flew to the door and began to shout after Vlad, suddenly terrified that something awful was going to happen. I beat on the door with my fists, but no one came to let me out._

_I could hear Sora screaming down the hall._

_**January 1, 1874** _

_I was so desperate to help Sora last night that I broke the window with my fist and leaped down to the ground. By the time I had run around the house and gotten back in. Vlad had already stolen Sora form his bed and dragged him into the basement. The door was locked and there were no windows. I could not hope to get in._

_I remember screaming, sobbing, begging Vlad to leave him alone, but he ignored me. I think I cried myself to sleep in front of that door, listening to the sounds Sora was making. Yet I woke up in my warm bed beside Vlad who was sleeping peacefully in the morning. I ran to the basement, but it was unlocked and empty of any horrors. Sora was in his bed, covers pulled up to his chin, eyes roving beneath his eyelids restlessly._

_Had I imagined it all?_

_**January 2, 1874** _

_The next morning, I took Sora on a ride through the country, having packed a picnic lunch and a book for us to share. Then, once we were alone, I demanded that he tell me what Vlad had done to him. He didn’t cry as he told me even though I could tell the Secret of the Blue Dress had torn him apart so deeply that he hardly had a hope of ever stitching himself back together again. I cradled him while he wracked with dry sobs, but I couldn’t promise it would be alright._

_**January 3, 1874** _

_What Vlad does to his nephew, to my beautiful Sora, is so terrible that I can only find the strength to put pen to paper in the dead of night when the rest of the house is asleep. I set off just this morning to burn that terrible blue silk dress, but I’m not sure it will do anything to stop him from hurting Sory. He does own a dress-making boutique and can easily make another to torment him with. It’s terrible! What he does is—_

Kairi turned the page, heart pounding in her throat, but there was only the next day’s entry on the page. Several pages were ripped out of Namine’s diary, jaggedly.

_**January 4, 1874** _

_I confronted Vlad with that horrifying secret, the secret of what he did to Sora in that basement when it was locked. He didn’t say anything to me, just glared at me as if I was some slimy creature that crawled on its belly. Then, he got up from out bed and left the room, slamming doors behind himself like a judge’s gavel banging down, condemning all who lived in this house._

_I went to sleep with Sora, but he couldn’t sleep either. Our nightmares kept waking us._

_**January 5, 1874** _

_Vlad’s going to send me away! He’s going to send me away!_

_I can’t leave him! I can’t leave him!_

_I won’t let him take me away!_

_**January 6, 1874** _

_I’m going to throw myself into the sea so I become one of those lingering ghosts. That way I will always be with him. I love you, Sora, and I’m sorry, but this is all I can do._

That was the last entry in Namine’s diary, handwriting sloppy and ink smeared with tears. Kairi assumed that on that very day, she had thrown herself into the churning sea from the black cliffs outside the Masterson Mansion. Shivering, Kairi closed the little white tome and cradled it against her chest, feeling sick at heart and incredibly cold. So many strange, happy, and terrible things had come to light through Namine’s diary. 

Sory’s real name was Sora, changed because Vlad ‘did not like it.’ How could he not like such a lovely name?

And Vlad did something horrible to his poor nephew, something having to do with the blue silk dress. The Secret of the Blue Dress, as Namine had called it. What was it? What had Vlad done?

The beautiful diamond-rose choker that Vlad had given to Kairi used to be around Namine’s neck. Namine had wished to be buried with it, but if it was now around Kairi’s neck…? The girl had been denied her last wish. 

Shivering, Kairi slipped the little book back into its hiding place among the other books, vowing to return it to Sory tomorrow morning. Then, she crept back to her chambers and slipped into bed beside Vlad. But, she couldn’t sleep. Her heart was pounding so loudly and so hard in her chest.

X X X

This was a crazy long chapter! More than 5,000 words.

Questions, comments, concerns?

Speculations?

REVIEWS!


	12. Anastasia, Anya, and I

Hm, so much I would like to say, but it would give away what happens in this chapter.

I can’t decide when I want to switch over Sory to Sora…

X X X

The next morning dawned with an unhappy grey drizzle that coated the entire the world like a heavy dreary blanket. The ocean was calm and as wine-dark as the abyss. When Vlad woke up, Kairi was in the bathroom, bent over the toilet, and retching violently. Her red hair was stringy and sweat-soaked, skin gaunt pale with big dark circles under her twilight-colored eyes, and she was trembling with exhaustion from her sickness. Vlad put his hand on her cold shaking back and she whirled to face him.

“Oh, you scared me,” she said, forced a small smile and then heaved over the toilet again. 

“Darling, are you ill?” Vlad asked and gently pulled her hair back from her face. 

“No, I’m…” she wiped her mouth delicately. For a moment, she almost told him that she was pregnant, but then she thought of Namine’s diary, of how she feared what he would do to his own children if he abused his nephew so. Kairi closed her mouth and pretended to be sick again, something she regretted because pretending brought on another wave of vomiting. “Yes. Forgive me if I don’t have breakfast with you this morning.”

“Of course,” Vlad said. 

Kairi listened to him dressing and then the door to their chambers closed. Relived, she drew a hot bath and soaked until she was sure he had left the mansion. Then, she did something she was certain she shouldn’t have done. She poured through the closet and dressers, found a light shimmery gown of pale blue silk made especially for her, went to the library, dug out Namine’s white dairy from behind the other books, and went to Sory’s basement room. For a moment, she hesitated outside his door, but then reached for the knob. It rattled in her hand as if locked, but finally swung open. 

Kairi lifted the hem of her skirt, tucked the small tome into the bodice of her dress, and descended the narrow concrete steps. It was pitch-dark and she had to grope around in front of her face in search of the pull-cord that turned on the light, but before she could pull the switch, she heard Vlad’s voice, flooding through the darkness as if coming up from Hell itself. Then, the light came on. Heart pounding, Kairi snatched up her dress and scrambled backwards, ducking out of sight. Suddenly, Namine’s diary felt as if it weighed one thousand pounds where it was tucked in the bodice of Kairi’s dress.

“This weekend, Sora, it will just be you and me,” Vlad snarled. His voice was that incredibly cruel tome again, like it had been in the kitchen what felt like an eternity ago— _‘Oh, for heaven's sake, have some bread. Your starvation is pathetic. You're like a slavering dog.’_ Then, Vlad continued, “My sweet bride will be going home to visit her mother and I will have you all to myself.”

She heard Sory make an anguished sound and Kairi peeked around the sharp concrete corner of the wall. 

Sory was sitting on his sagging mattress, knees drawn up against his chest. His beautiful blue eyes were out of focus, staring at some point on the floor. Vlad was right in his face, inches from Sory’s nose. He gave him a light slap on the face. It was loud, but left not a single mark on Sory’s pale face. Either way, the poor young man recoiled as if Vlad had carved half the flesh from his face. 

“Just you and me, dear Sora,” Vlad said. He grabbed Sory’s face roughly and practically dragged him to his feet. Then, he slapped him again. Sory hit the ground and lay there, showing no sign of getting up though there was no way that small strike had knocked him unconscious. Kairi could see his unfocused eyes open, staring at nothing. Vlad stepped away from Sory’s crumpled form, coming towards the staircase. 

Kairi leaped to her feet and scrambled backwards, escaping the basement as if it was filling with acid. Thankfully, she made it upstairs and managed to silently close the door. Vlad just came out of the basement as she was disappearing around the corner. She threw herself down on the sofa in the foyer and tried to look sick, which didn’t prove very difficult. She was pale and sweating.

Vlad came around the corner a moment later, his face flushed and his eyes shining. “Oh, sweetheart, I’m not sure you should be out of bed. You don’t look well,” he said. She felt his eyes touching the blue silk dress she was wearing warily. “And I’m not sure that pale blue is your color.”

“Really?” Kairi asked, playing innocent. “It’s my favorite color.”

“Well, I am paid very handsomely to know which color fits a woman best and I would set yours at something darker—fuchsia or cobalt,” Vlad said and leaned over to feel her forehead. “Have you seen Franny lately? It’s very strange of her to disappear like this.”

“No, I haven’t,” Kairi said. “So, you really don’t like this dress?” 

He smiled. “It’s a beautiful color, love, just not on you.” Then, he shrugged into his suit coat and saw himself out the door into the dreadful drizzle. 

Kairi dashed back to her chambers, dragged her leather messenger bag with the photographs she had shown the priest from beneath the bed, stuffed Namine’s diary inside it along with the gathered photos, changed into a heavy knit gown lined with silk, and fastened her fur-lined cloak around her shoulders. Then, she scraped her hair back into a sloppy braid, stole an umbrella from the hall closet, and rushed through the drizzle to the stables. Not without some difficulty, she managed to hook up a single horse to a small open carriage. Then, she guided herself out through the rain. 

It wasn’t a good day for traveling, but that was exactly what Kairi was going to do. 

…

With the scant directions in Namine’s diary and the lack of people about on the streets to ask direction from made it rather hard to find the small home where Anastasia Masterson lived. Thankfully, the first house Kairi called at was able to successfully direct her to Anya’s home. It proved to be a small quaint little cottage that was so cheery even the gloom of the rain couldn’t dampen it. There were roses around the door and wide front window framed with long lace curtains that looked into a warm little room lit by a glowing fire and a warm amber reading lantern. Anya was sitting in a rocking chair, knitting absently while she stared into the crackling flames. Kairi shouldered her satchel, had a small word with the horse—begging Tiger Lily not to leave her stranded if she didn’t tie her—and then knocked carefully on the door. 

After a long moment of standing, shivering, in the rain, Anya opened the door. Like her house, she was a lovely woman, even at her advanced age of sixty-five. She had long tumbling ruby-red hair as fine and soft as silk only streaked with silver in one place above her left eye and beautiful blue eyes that stared right through Kairi. “Hello,” Anya said sweetly. “Please, come in.” Once Kairi was safely inside where it was warm and dry, Anya said, not unkindly, “You’ll have to forgive me, child, but I have no idea who you are.”

“Oh, no, I wouldn’t expect you to. My name is Kairi Masterson—”

“Vladdy’s new bride?” Anya asked. She looked suddenly very pale and sank down in her rocking chair as if her legs could no longer support her. “So, it’s starting again. I cannot believe it’s starting again… all over again… after everything…”

“What’s starting again?” Kairi whispered. She felt incredibly cold and it wasn’t just from the seeping drizzle outside. 

Anya reached out, gesturing for the girl, and Kairi came closer to her. Then, the elderly woman’s hands closed around Kairi’s shoulders like ice-cold claws, digging into her flesh. Kairi let out a squeak of pain and tried to pull away, but Anya’s grip was iron. “Please, do not give that man any sons! Give him no children! The Masterson line must end!”

Kairi wrenched away from Anya, falling over backwards to land on her ass. She could feel the heat of the fire scraping against her back like little knives. “What?!” 

Anya’s beautiful blue eyes welled up with tears. “The Masterson line needs to end. The horrors must stop.” Then, a strange glaze came over Anya’s eyes and she gazed somewhere past Kairi’s fallen form. “That’s why Anya killed Yuffie. That’s why Anya sent Roxas away.”

“What?” Kairi whispered. Her heart raced. “You killed Yuffie?”

Anya shook her head. “No, Anya did. Anya pushed Yuffie in front of the carriage.” 

“Why?” Kairi breathed. This seemed impossible. How could such a beautiful innocent-looking woman have been behind Yuffie’s tragic death? 

“Yuffie told Anya that she was pregnant again and Vlad couldn’t have another son, so Anya killed Yuffie and sent Roxas away. She told Vlad that Roxas killed his mother and had run away,” Anya explained. Her face was pale, but she had stopped crying. Some semblance of calm had come over her, some kind of strange separation. 

“But Roxas isn’t dead…” Kairi whispered. (Roxas was such an unusual name that they’re couldn’t possibly be more than one of them within a twenty mile radius. She was certain of it.)

“Anya knows. She sent him away to live with Yuffie’s brother, Vincent Kisaragi.”

“Does Vlad know that his son is alive?”

Anya shook her head. “No, Vincent is clever, just like Anya,” she explained. “He took care of everything. He understood why it had to be done.” 

Kairi wet her lips. “Why did it have to be done?”

For a moment, Anya stared at Kairi with those far-seeing eyes of hers. “Because Dimitri passed it on. He passed it on to Vlad and Vlad was going to pass it on to Roxas. Anya couldn’t let that happen. She had to stop it before it started again.”

“What was he going to pass on?”

“His hatred.” Her voice sounded cold with terror. “Dimitri hated his son and he hated Anya. He tortured them.”

“Tortured them?” Kairi whispered. 

Anya nodded and reached out again. Like an injured child, Kairi returned to Anya and let the older woman grip her hands tightly. “You cannot understand the things Anya went through. She had to listen to her husband destroying her son and she was able to do nothing to help him. It is a mother’s job to protect her children and Anya couldn’t protect little Vladdy. She was so hurt. She used to beg Dimitri to hurt her instead of her child, but he never listened. He hated his son more than he hated beautiful Anya.”

“What did he do to them?”

“Oh.” Anya leaned back in her rocking chair and gazed into the fire. “Dimitri didn’t hurt both of them, only Anya and Vladdy. He cared nothing for Dirk.”

“Dirk was Sora’s father, right?” Kairi asked.

“Yes, dear sweet monstrous Dirk. He was older than Vladdy—the prodigal son—and he was born hating women so his father let him do as he pleased. Do you know Dirk used to bite Anya’s poor nipple when she breast-fed him?” Anya nodded and began to rock. “Oh, yes, bite her until she bled. Then, he met that prostitute, Rose-Red. He promised her a life off the streets if she married him and the poor girl was so entranced by him that she was drawn in like a fly to a spider’s beautiful web of lies. Her life was roses and honey for two weeks. Then, Dirk began to sell her. As poor prostitutes often do, she became with child, but Dirk did not know whose child it was. He knew only that it wasn’t his. Oh, no, he never slept with Rose-Red… only hurt her.”

Kairi’s eyes widened. This was nothing like what had been written in Namine’s diary. Kairi had envisioned Rose-Red to have cheated on Dirk Masterson and then committed suicide on the cliffs for her shame. The story was growing darker. The only sounds were the crackle of the fire, the creak of the chair, and the tapping of rain on the windows. 

Anya was quiet for a long time. “Poor Rose-Red… she had such a beautiful baby boy… another boy for the terrible Masterson line. She let Anya hold him once, you know, I was there. That baby had the most beautiful eyes even at birth—stunning sky-blue, like glimmering jewel, and with such long thick lashes.” Anya shook her head sadly. “A child like that was doomed in a terrible family like the Mastersons. Dirk, enraged not to have a cruel son he could teach to carry his hate, raged at his wife. She took the baby and threw herself into the sea. If it wasn’t for Anya, poor sweet child would have drowned but she plucked him from his mother’s shattered body and took him back to the house.” 

“Sora fell over the cliffs?”

“Oh, many people threw themselves into the ocean off that cliff. That’s why there are so many stones in the water, you know.” Anya rocked for a moment as if thinking. “The gods take pity on people who throw themselves into the ocean. They turn them into stones so that they may forever be anchored to this world until the ocean turns them into sand. Then, they may pass into heaven.”

“But Sora survived?” 

Anya stared at her as if she were incredibly stupid. “Yes, silly child, Anya plucked him from the water and brought him back up to the mansion. He survived, but he was always quiet after that. Sora used to cry a lot. Colic,” she explained. “It was almost as if when Rose-Red died, she took the sickness from him and brought it to her grave with her. Vlad still had some heart then and he sent the child far away, to the farthest reaches of the family tree, but it was no use. All the Mastersons are afflicted this awful damaging illness. I can only imagine what that poor young child suffered, if he even survived without his mother at all.” Anya rocked. “Poor sweet child…”

“What did Anya do then?”

“Oh, Sora was born much later, when Anya was almost an old woman. She was fifty-one-years-old. She did nothing. She couldn’t anymore.”

“But, what about Yuffie?” Kairi asked.

“Yuffie Kisaragi was much earlier. Anya was forty-one when Yuffie married Vladdy. For a full year, they had a happy marriage. It appeared as if Dimitri had been unable to pass his sickness on to Vladdy before he died.”

“How did he die?” Kairi whispered.

Anya laughed a little. “Oh, why, Anya killed him of course.”

Kairi bit her lip. “Then, what about Yuffie?”

“Oh, everything was fine. Yuffie was such a charming girl—full of spunk and life and happiness.” Anya stopped rocking. “But then, she gave birth to a son. He had the same eyes as Sora and Anya knew bad things would happen, but she waited… just in case these blue eyes could break the cycle, but she couldn’t wait long enough. Just a few months later, Yuffie was pregnant again. Anya couldn’t risk her giving Vladdy another son, so she killed her.”

“But… what if her children had been able to break the cycle?”

Anya’s eyes blazed. “You don’t understand! Anya couldn’t risk it! What if they became like Dimitri and Dirk?! Then, there would be two of them!” 

Kairi shrank back form Anya’s fury, but it cooled quickly and the woman slumped down in her rocking chair.

“Anya had to do it,” she whispered. “Anya had to kill them all… She had to kill Dimitri and Yuffie… She had to kill them…” Anya collapsed into whispers, repeating herself over and over again. 

After a few minutes of her rocking and whispering, Kairi reached out and took her shoulders gently. She gave her a small shake and whispered, “Um, Anya?”

Anya’s head snapped up and she snarled, “I am not Anya! Anya did horrible things! If you want to talk to her, then talk to her! Do not talk to me!” She shoved Kairi backwards and pointed sharply at the big gold mirror hanging on the wall across from her. Reflected in it was only Anya. But Kairi realized that Anya had hidden the bad things she had done so deep inside herself that they seemed as if another person entirely had done them. Her mind had shattered and split. 

“Would you like some tea?” Kairi whispered softly, thinking of Franny.

“Oh, yes, tea would be lovely.”

Kairi went to the kitchen, found a small porcelain pot, and brewed some green tea. Then, she set two cups on a wooden tray along with the pot and carried them back into the foyer where Anya was still rocking away in her chair. But she looked calm and sweet again.

“What about Namine?” Kairi asked as she set the tray of tea down beside Anya. 

“Namine,” Anya spoke the name as if it was a dream. “Oh, dear sweet Namine. Vlad told me she threw herself into the ocean. She came to visit me once—her and the sweetest child with blue eyes just like Roxas’s. She said his name was Sory… Such dear sweet children…”

“She did throw herself into the ocean, but… do you know why?”

“The hate must have gotten to her. Yes, it must have with that beautiful child Sory in the house. I must stop Vlad, before he strikes again! The cycle cannot be allowed to continue! Anya! Anya! Anya, you failed! It’s starting again! You must stop it! Anya! Anya!”

“What will Anya do?” Kairi asked, forced to shout over Anya’s panicked screams as she flailed around in her rocking chair. She seemed unable to get to her feet and for that Kairi was thankful.

“She’ll kill them! She’ll kill them all! Let that dark house be plunged into the sea and be beat upon by the waves until it is naught but sand! Let it catch fire and burn into ashes! Let everyone inside remain there until they rot! Anya! Anya! Anya, you must kill them all! You must kill them all! Anya!”

Terrified, Kairi raced from Anya’s lovely cottage and clambered into the damp carriage. The paint, Tiger Lily, was waiting, her ears pressed flat against her head at the sounds of the screams. The great beast appeared troubled, prancing in place. Kairi slapped the reins and Tiger Lily took off even more eagerly than Kairi. The sounds of Anya’s screams chased them down the block, but were soon swallowed up by the dreary fog that had rolled in because of the rain.

X X X

So, Anya…?

Questions, comments, concerns?

Speculations?

REVIEWS!


	13. Sora: Secret of the Blue Dress

I don’t know. Don’t ask.

X X X

Kairi stood in front of her mirror, looking at her stomach from each angle and direction, but was satisfied that there was no sign of a baby bump on her slender figure. Then, she began looking at her flat stomach in a different way. She thought of the child growing inside her. She thought of what Anya had said, how Vlad was going to pass on his hatred to her child, how Dimitri had tortured his wife and son. She cradled her belly, imagining she felt movement, and sighed heavily. She feared for her unborn child but vowed she would do everything she could to protect it. 

Then, she got back into her dress and went downstairs to look for Franny. It was strange for the elderly servant who ran the entire house to be nowhere to be found. She roamed the house like she had when she first came, looking in each room and peering into every closet. She asked the servants she passed if they had seen Franny, but they were all just as perplexed as Kairi. Even the gardener, Lena, hadn’t seen Franny about on the grounds and Kairi hadn’t seen her in the stable when she arrived home with the ‘borrowed’ carriage. 

Speaking of there being no trace of something, there seemed no sign of whatever Vlad had done to Sory at all. No bruises on his face from the slaps, no terror in his face, no small broken animal sounds coming out of his mouth. The young man was a little quieter than usual, but other than that, there was nothing abnormal about him. He was helping Kairi look for Franny and she had run into him a few times throughout her search. 

The other strange thing, besides Franny’s disappearance, was that Vlad was very late in coming home. Finally, Sory and Kairi gave up their search and went to the kitchen. Sory wouldn’t eat and went back to his basement room, the servants ate in the kitchen, and Kairi ate alone in the dining room. Finally, Vlad arrived home, full of apologies and excuses. 

“I’m so sorry, sweetheart. This fog really slowed me down and the roads are nothing but mud. Thank heavens it’s going to be sunny tomorrow. It will be lovely weather for traveling.” He kissed her and then slid into the chair beside her. “I was thinking that this weekend, to celebrate our being married a full month, you should go visit your mother.”

He just wants to be alone in the house with Sory, she reminded herself because Vlad looked so earnest. “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve been sick…”

“Maybe the change of scenery will do you good,” he suggested as a servant brought him out a plate. “This looks good. So, what do you say? Wouldn’t you like to see your mother? To make up for the fact that you haven’t written her any letters?”

Kairi’s head snapped up, twilight eyes narrowed. She had written to her mother—once—but then she had gone out into the storm with the letter in her bodice and the rain had soaked it thoroughly that Kairi had been forced to throw it out, but that wasn’t the point. “How do you know I haven’t written her any letters?” 

Vlad smiled. “Sweetheart, everything that goes on in this house goes through me first.” For some reason, that sounded like a threat, but maybe that was just her new knowledge of Vlad talking. Either way, though, it sounded like a threat.

Kairi stabbed her fork into a piece of chicken and chewed very slowly, deliberately. “Yes, I suppose it would be lovely to visit my mother,” she said to him. Then, she forced a smile across her face. “When do I leave?”

“Friday afternoon, love, tomorrow morning,” Vlad said. He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I shall make the arrangements at once.” Then, he stood up from the table, leaving his plate full, and hurried away to their chambers. 

Kairi stared after him, twilight-colored eyes narrowed. Knowing that he planned to do something horrible to poor sweet Sory, the very last thing she was going to do was leave the house and visit her mother. That was exactly what Vlad wanted. 

Kairi finished her dinner slowly, laying out her plans. 

…

The next morning, Vlad woke to Kairi lying beside him in their bed. Her red hair was strewn across the creamy pillows, her bare shoulder shining in the morning light, the covers were pulled up neatly to hide her breasts, and her brow was wrinkled as if she was having a bad dream. Gingerly, he kissed her naked shoulder. She groaned and shifted, but did not wake. Since she had been sick the day before Vlad chose to let her sleep. Instead he bathed, dressed, and went downstairs for a cup of hot coffee. Franny was not in the kitchen and her tea pot had not been touched overnight. Vlad spent a moment looking at the exquisite set with the dragon painted on it and breathing fire. Then, he took it and its six cups down from the shelf and tossed them in the trash. Franny wouldn’t need them anymore.

…

Kairi dressed, packed a small bag, and walked downstairs. Surprisingly, Sory was standing just outside the bedroom door, head lowered, eyes hidden behind his long unkempt hair. Wordlessly, he reached out and embraced her. There was something desperate about the way he held her. Kairi wanted to whisper that everything was going to be alright, that she wasn’t going to leave him, but she couldn’t risk him blowing her cover. Instead, she rubbed his back and held him firmly until he chose to pull away.

Vlad was standing at the window in the foyer, sipping his coffee, when she came downstairs. He greeted her with a kiss and escorted her quickly out to the waiting carriage as if eager to be rid of her. Sure enough the day was bright and cheery, perfect weather for traveling, but not perfect weather for sneaking about. Kairi waved to Vlad and he waved back. Then, the carriage turned around the corner and was hidden behind a thicket of trees. It was then that Kairi put her plan into action.

…

Vlad had left him waiting all day, wound tight as a clock with fear. Outside the windows, dark night had fallen. Sora was lying on his filthy mattress in the basement, waiting in anguish with his back to the doorway. Ever fiber and nerve in his body was on end, terrified, wound so tightly that he thought he would pull apart at the seams like a ragged doll. Then, he heard it—the monster’s footsteps on the concrete steps. Vlad came to the side of his bed and stopped there, breathing like some beast about to spit fire. Sora shuddered, but then felt the whisper of cool silk on his face. The dress… the terrible blue silk dress was lying across his body, so light and airy and cool.

“Get dressed.”

A small animal sound was caught in his throat as he stood from the bed like a marionette with its strings cut. With Vlad’s eyes burning into him, he unbuttoned his shirt with shaking hands and let the soft white linen slide from his porcelain-white shoulders.

Vlad made a disgusted sound deep in his throat and then came his voice—that terrible cruel voice that cut through is mind and body like shards of cold glass. “Look at you.” He circled Sora like a vulture on the hunt. “You have a disgusting feminine body to go with your hideous womanly name. What is this?” He slapped the flat of his palm on Sora’s white stomach, watching the redness spread beneath the thin skin. “You even bruise like a woman. It’s disgusting!” He slapped Sora across the face, laughing as the poor fourteen-year-old boy cradled his face and whimpered. “Go on! Get dressed! Or are you shy, bitch?”

Shaking even more, Sora unfastened the belt of his trousers, undid the button, and lowered the zipper. Then, he stepped out of his pants and stood before Vlad in his underwear, shivering. He was wearing a pair of women’s panties that Vlad had forced on him, small delicate lacy things. They weren’t meant for boys. He clutched his healed hands to his abdomen, starving and terrified. 

“Go ahead! How about the rest of it?” Vlad snarled.

Wordlessly, Sora slid his underwear down his legs and stepped out of them. Being out of them was almost a relief, but not compared to being completely naked before Vlad. He lowered his burning face. Shame dug its claws into him, viciously tearing him apart. His throat burned and he couldn’t breathe and his eyes welled up with tormented tears, but even still Vlad continued. He circled Sora, burning him with his murderous eyes. The flat of his hand lashed out again and again—striking Sora’s face, his shoulders, his back, his belly, his behind. 

Then came the final searing blow. Vlad caught his genitals, clenched hard in a single fist, nails carving into the soft flesh. The pain speared through Sora, lit him on fire and burned him from the inside out. Tears flooded out of his blue eyes and coursed down his face. 

“Please, please, let go. Please, it hurts…”

“Does it?” Vlad snarled and only tightened his grip, yanking Sora hard. “That’s because this doesn’t belong on you.” He pulled hard, twisting Sora’s small penis from side to side as if to tear it off. “This is something that belongs on a man and you are a worthless little girl.”

“Please, please, stop…” Sora whimpered. Animal sounds escape him, pure agony. “Please, I’m sorry.”

With a snort, Vlad released him. 

Sora crumpled like a wet paper doll. The cold harsh floor filleted the flesh from his shoulders and jaw, but it was welcome pain compared to the feeling of Vlad’s horrible hands on his tender secret flesh. He clutched himself, trying to soothe the anguish inflicted on him. 

“Get up!” Vlad voice was so loud it was like another slap.

Sora staggered to his feet, still clutching himself and shivering. He wanted to sob, to cry. Why was this happening? What was wrong with him? Sometimes, he wanted to be a woman. He had seen girl’s raped, but he was sure no pain could compare to this. Let Vlad rape his poor female body and then leave him alone to lick his wounds. Let him be satisfied with that instead of this terrible agony that just went on and on.

But Sora wasn’t a girl. 

He was just a boy. 

“Just like a little girl, aren’t you Sora? You have a little girl’s name and a little girl’s body, but why not little girl parts?” Vlad’s hand was between his legs again, nails raking the sensitive flesh, making goose bumps rise across his pale naked skin. “Huh, where are your little girl parts so I can love you like your father loved you?”

Sora whimpered. He remembered when Vlad made him write on the walls with his blood. He remembered the knife carving into his arm, making an inkwell of blood for the scraping little stick that he wrote with on the concrete. Then, Vlad had hurt him with the walls, thrown him against the cold stone over and over and over until his body was all broken. That was after Namine was already dead, already part of the ocean.

“Is that what you want? To be loved like a woman?”

“No,” Sora moaned.

Vlad punched him in the stomach, so hard and fast it was like being hit by a train. 

Sora let out an anguished mewl, doubling over. He sounded like a kitten, trapped, being crushed underfoot. He tasted blood in his mouth. Shadows darted in at him, pawing out with cold stabbing black hands. They wanted to take him into Hell, drag him beneath the earth, beneath the sea—away from Namine and back to his father. 

Vlad’s foot was in his stomach and his voice was coming from far away. “Get up.”

The monsters retreated. 

Sora was lying on the floor, arms and legs twisted. What had happened? He didn’t remember falling.

“You fainted like a little bitch. Too much pain for you?” Vlad snarled in his face. He grabbed him by a handful of soft chocolate tresses and dragged him to his feet. 

Sora whimpered and hugged himself tightly, cradling his shoulders in his hands.

“Put it on,” Vlad snarled at him and kicked the fallen blue silk dress.

Trembling, Sora knelt and lifted the dress, holding it gingerly against his naked body. He looked up at Vlad, begging with his beautiful eyes. _Please, please, don’t do this to me again. Please, don’t make me hurt so badly._ Then, the dress slipped from his numb fingers and pooled on the concrete floor like water. 

Suddenly, Vlad slapped him across the face, harder than ever. “See, you and your stupid womanly name. Sora is a pretty little girl’s name. This is how you should be dressed. You are a woman and are to be treated as such.” Again, he struck Sora across the face. Both cheeks were red and beginning to swell. 

There was that sound again—the little crushed kitten mewl. “Please, don’t do this…”

“Do what?”

“Please, don’t hurt me anymore…”

“You don’t want this?”

“No. Please…”

Vlad smiled. He liked it best on these rare occasions when Sora protested him. When he was so frightened and compliant, it wasn’t as sweet. 

Then, the wall was stone hard against Sora’s naked back, tearing all the flesh off his spine. He cried out, that pathetic animal sound again. He felt his hot blood rolling down his back.

“Put on the dress, Sora, and I won’t hurt you anymore.”

His voice trembled. “You promise?” he whispered, but it was more like begging. 

The cold from the concrete wall was seeping into his back and the heat of Vlad’s body was burning his front and there was pain everywhere—his slapped face, his punched abdomen, his burning shame, his broken soul. He felt as if he was splitting apart at the seams. 

Vlad ran a hand down his white chest and cupped Sora’s genitals gently. “I promise.” Then, he took his hands off of Sora and stepped back.

For a moment, Sora just stood there, shivering. Then, he gingerly slipped the gown over his head, letting it hug his naked flesh. The silk was cool, light, and airy. Something so light and pretty shouldn’t have caused him so much pain. He spread his hands as if for Vlad’s approval, shuddering. 

“You’re so pathetic, pretty Sora.” 

Vlad caressed Sora’s face and Sora squeezed his sky-blue eyes tightly shut. He knew what was coming. The slap was not surprising, but the force was. Reeling, Sora fell over and managed to catch himself on his hands and knees. Whimpering, he began to crawl towards his mattress as if it would be able to save him, as if the monsters from under the bed could not get him so long as he was safely on top of his bed hidden beneath the covers. 

But it didn’t stop Vlad. 

Vlad caught him by his cold ankle and dragged him back, nails and palms digging into the concrete floor desperately. He crushed Sora into the floor, laying on top of him. The air rushed from his lungs and he began sobbing with terror. From his boot, Vlad produced a small switchblade. 

“Please, please, don’t do this!” Sora sobbed, scratching at the cold concrete with is ragged broken fingernails. “Please, don’t!”

“But you’re a little girl! You can’t have little boy parts!” Vlad shouted at him. He crushed Sora’s windpipe with his hand until the boy was dizzy and weak with lack of oxygen. Then, he rolled him onto his back, hitched the blue dress up over his hips, and pressed the cold blade of the knife to Sora’s inner thigh. 

Sora went ramrod straight, barely daring to breathe. Vlad had never done this to him before. He had never put the knife to his genitals, only to his throat and his face and his chest. “Please, please, please,” he whispered and sobbed. “Please, don’t.”

Vlad cut his inner thigh, carving deep into the flesh. Sora screamed, sobbing in agony. 

“Don’t cry,” Vlad snarled. “I’ll cut you a vagina if you cry.”

Sora pressed his hands to his face, smothering himself and the animal sounds he was making.

Vlad grinned, taking the chance to toy with his prey while Sora was wound so tight and blind. He ran the knife up and down Sora’s soft penis and then pressed in at the tip. Surprisingly, Sora didn’t make a sound, but he did begin to tremble fiercely, as if his body would break apart. Vlad pressed the knife to Sora’s other thigh, making a long shallow cut. Still, the boy was silent. 

That’s not what Vlad wanted. 

He wanted to hear the boy’s feminine screams. 

“Sora, look at me…” Sora’s pale slender white hands pulled down, covering only his mouth now. Those cerulean sky-clue eyes shone like misplaced stars, so afraid, so hopeless. 

Vlad put the switchblade back into his boot and took out a long narrow needle, knowing the Sora could see him. Vlad planned to drive the needle right into Sora’s penis as the knife would cause too much damage and possibly sever it. He was sure the screams the boy would release would ring in his ears until sweet Kairi came home to distract him. 

“No! Stop it!” 

Then, something crashed into the back of Vlad’s skull, hard. He had a moment of confusion where he wondered what the hell had just happened and then darkness consumed him.

X X X

Mwuahahaha! Cliffhanger! I’m so evil, yes?

Questions, comments, concerns?

Speculations?

Shock?

REVIEWS!


	14. The Croquet Mallet

Nothing to say.

X X X

Croquet mallets made excellent weapons. 

Lowering the mallet from its swing-position over her shoulder, Kairi silently thanked her mother for forcing her to play countless pointless games on the lawn each summer while also apologizing for shirking out of her visit in the same breath. Because of those endless games, Kairi had an excellent swing and was able to knock Vlad out in one clean hit. If his head had been the ball, it would have been neatly through the uprights. 

Beneath Vlad’s crumpled form, naked under that soft blue silk dress and exposed to the waist, lay Sora with both hands pressed desperately to his mouth. He was staring up at Kairi as if she was some kind of avenging angel, eyes wide and disbelieving as if it were an impossibility that someone save him. His hands her pressed to his mouth so hard that his ragged nails were digging into his face and his knuckles were bone-white.

“Get up,” Kairi said hoarsely and leaned the croquet mallet carefully against the wall in case she needed it again. She knelt, pried Sora’s hands away from his mouth, and tried to drag him out from beneath Vlad. The second she touched him, he came alive. 

Sora scrambled to his feet, unsteadily, blood streaking down his thighs. “W-wh-why?” he forced out.

“We don’t have time for that,” Kairi said. She wanted to wash the blood from his legs and maybe get some makeshift bandages on him. She produced a handkerchief from her bodice and ripped it in half as she walked to the grimy bathroom. 

“W-wait,” Sora called out.

Kairi stepped into the dingy little room, flipped on the light, and immediately scuttled backwards with a scream bottled up in her throat. 

On the floor lay Franny. 

The elderly servant’s neck was twisted at an impossible angle, broken. Her tongue was hanging out of her mouth, bloated and purple, and her grey eyes were glazed with a milky covering. Her skirts were twisted around her legs from the awkward position she had been tossed in, grey hair loose of its bun and scattered around her head like smoke, and dark ugly bruises formed a heavy necklace around her narrow white neck. She was very dead and had been for at least two or three days. 

Apparently, Franny hadn’t been missing so much as dead! 

Kairi clapped her hands over her nose and mouth and tried very hard not to be sick, but to no avail. Her gorge rose in the back of her throat and she barely made it to the toilet, tripping over Franny’s body in her haste to get to the porcelain bowl. While she was retching, she felt cool shaking fingers on her head, gently holding her hair back from her face. When she finished, she looked back to see Sora kneeling there beside her. He was naked, having torn the blue silk dress over his head the first chance he got. She quickly looked away. It was wrong to take in his body while Franny lay dead under their feet and Vlad was unconscious in the other room.

“You knew she was here?” Kairi whispered. 

Sora nodded. “He said he’d hurt you if I told anyone. He was going to throw her body into the sea.”

“Why would he kill her?”

“Anya called her…” Sora whispered. “Franny was going to take us away.”

Kairi had a bad taste in her mouth and it had nothing to do with her sickness. Gently, she pulled her hair from Sora’s fingers and stood up. She couldn’t look at Franny’s body, but her eyes were drawn to the poor dead woman anyway. Then, she was glad she’d looked. In Franny’s apron pocket was a small wad of money and hastily scribbled directions on a sheet of paper. Kairi took both and tucked them into her bodice. “Get dressed,” she said to Sora. “We’re getting out of here.”

While Sora dressed, Kairi rushed upstairs and dumped everything out of the small satchel she had pretended to pack. Then, she repacked it with better supplies—bread and cheese and a canteen of water, some of Vlad’s clothes for Sora, a fresh dry dress for herself, a map, Vlad’s gold compass, a flint, the things she had taken from Franny’s pocket, and finally the silver rose broach in case she needed to pawn something for more money. Then, she stole another fur-lined cloak for Sora from Vlad’s closet and hurried back downstairs. 

Sora was waiting, looking frail and nervous, outside the basement door. Kairi passed the cloak to him and tried to take his hand, but he pulled away. His blue eyes were so red, so bloodshot. Kairi thought of the fear in his voice, in his face, while Vlad loomed above him. Kairi swallowed the knot in her throat and gestured for him to follow her. 

Gathering the cloak tight against his white throat, Sora took her pack and then walked wordlessly at her side. It wasn’t until they reached the stables and Kairi was beginning to sort through the tack that he spoke. “Why did you do that?” he whispered and gently took a heavy Western saddle from her hands. 

“Do what?” Kairi asked him and followed with two bridles.

“Hit him…”

Her heart skipped a few beats. “He was hurting you. He was going to cut you in… unmentionable places.”

“He always does,” Sora said softly and chose the dapple grey horse. He saddled Polly with ease and Kairi realized just how much of an impact he had on these horses as Polly turned her big head to nuzzle him. Sora stroked her face, gently, absently, looking into her big brown eyes. “He likes to hurt me…”

“I couldn’t let him,” Kairi said and handed Sora the bridle. 

He winced as if struck. “You’ll be like Namine… like Franny… No one can help me…”

“Why?”

“They all die.”

Kairi swallowed and forced out. “I won’t die.”

Sora didn’t say anything. He just returned to the tack room, selected another saddle, and put it on the paint, Tiger Lily. She, too, nickered softly and nuzzled him. Kairi stroked the great beast’s flank and handed Sora the second bridle. With the two horses tacked, he wordlessly stepped aside.

“Sora?” Kairi whispered. “Come with me.”

“No,” he said but it came out sounding more like pure pain. 

“Why not? Do you want to stay?” 

“No.” Again, that crushed dying sound in his voice.

“Then come with me.” 

Kairi hoisted herself into Polly’s saddle, adjusting her skirts and the satchel across her shoulders. There were saddlebags behind her, but she didn’t want to waste time packing them while Vlad could be waking up and preparing to come after them with much worse than a croquet mallet. 

“Come with me,” she said again.

Sora looked at war with himself, eyes darting and face pale. Then, finally, he mounted up without a word and urged Tiger Lily out of the stables. Kairi followed, but he did not close the gate behind them. Instead, he left it open and the other horse (two of the five having pulled the carriage Kairi was supposed to still be in on the way to her mother’s) followed them only to the edge of the dark woods. Then, neighing and rearing up to paw the sky, the horse took off in the opposite direction, neighs echoing in the empty sky. Suddenly, it was very quiet. Kairi hunched deeper into her cloak. She couldn’t hear anything except the screaming ocean behind them, nothing else, and the silence sent a chill down her spine. She had no proof that the horse had run off the cliffs behind them, but she suddenly had ice in her veins. Sora must have felt it, too, because he shivered violently, but that could have just been from the chill of his ordeal. Kairi didn’t have proof of anything. 

…

The directions Kairi had taken from Franny’s apron proved to be more than a day’s ride when she stopped a merchant with a rolling hot cakes stand and asked for directions. He had smiled at her eagerly, given her good directions, and even a free hot cake. Then, he gave her a weather forecast, promising a downpour later that night that would turn the roads to muck, but Kairi didn’t put much stock in that since the sky was crystal-clear blue. Kairi thanked him for the directions, the weather, and the cake. Strangely, the merchant didn’t pay any attention to Sora who was slouched deep in his cloak with the hood pulled up over his face. Sora was very unnoticeable. 

The night turned very cold very quickly once the sun sank below the horizon. Sora and Kairi rode until sunset at which point heavy black clouds had rolled in and Kairi was beginning to wish she had listened to the merchant and stopped at the inn they had passed a while back. Instead, she urged Sora to ride harder, hoping to outrun the rains. 

No such luck.

The rain came up suddenly without a single breath of air to announce its coming. Within minutes, they were both soaked through to the bone. Sora pulled up alongside her and Kairi could hear his teeth chattering. She was freezing also, but she was clenching her jaw hard enough to break her teeth. 

“The horses are tired,” was all he said to her through his chattering teeth. 

Kairi didn’t say anything. She was afraid if she started talking, her chattering teeth would spiral out of control.

They rode for a while longer, crushed down by the rain and freezing. Finally, Kairi decided they needed to stop and try to warm up. She could see a small grove of dense pine trees of to her left and gestured with shaking hands. Sora nodded. His lips were white and his entire body was shaking violently. Kairi instantly felt horrible for making him stay out in this weather. She should have stopped hours ago, but she was afraid Vlad would catch them. She wanted as much space between her and her husband as possible.

Sora dismounted, slipping and sliding in the mud, and led Tiger Lily through the dense foliage. It was still damp beneath the shelter of the trees, but only a few rebellious drops were sneaking through the heavy boughs. Kairi hunched low over Polly’s neck, pushing aside branches with her hands. Then, they were safely inside the grove.

“I think we can start a fire,” Kairi said. “If we keep it small, we should be alright.”

Sora nodded and began carefully searching the darkness for vaguely dry tinder. After gathering what he could, he heaped a few heavier sticks around the small circle. Kairi handed him the flint and watched as he worked the damp grasses and dry needles into a small blaze. Eventually, he built it into a good-sized fire. Then, he unsaddled the horses and gently looped the reins over a tree branch, not tying them off. He dried out the saddles around the fire and huddled as close as he could to the leaping flames without burning off his flesh. 

Kairi mimicked him, wrapping her arms tightly around her bent legs and smoothing her skirts down over her legs in an attempt to keep them warm. She peered at Sora across the fire, watching the amber light play off the ivory planes of his face. Most of the light caught in his eyes. The cerulean orbs practically glowed in the dark.

“Sora?”

He didn’t say anything, just looked at her without distraction, those eyes gleaming in his pale face.

She had wanted to ask him why Vlad tormented him so, why he had been through so much in his short life, but she couldn’t bear to see that terrible fear in his face again. Especially not now when his eyes were so very bright. Instead, she just asked, “Are you cold?”

For a moment, he just stared at her as if uncomprehending. Then, he nodded slowly.

“Can I sit with you?”

“You are sitting with me.”

She smiled, looking at him across the fire. “I mean, can I sit beside you? It’ll warm you up.”

“No.”

“I won’t hurt you,” Kairi promised. 

He stared at her and then nodded slowly. 

Kairi stood up, carefully keeping her skirts out of the fire, and sat down beside him in the dirt. She wanted to put her arm around him, but wasn’t sure how he’d react. There was a chill coming off of his body, icy waves rolling off his pale skin. Gingerly and hesitantly, Kairi wrapped her arm around his shoulders. He tensed, but did not pull away from her. After a long moment, he leaned against her, shivering. She hugged him against her, rubbing his back and his shoulders. Finally, he grew warm and heavy, breath deep and even. Kairi adjusted him in her arms, resting his head in her lap and reclining against one of the saddles. She didn’t know exactly when she fell asleep, but she woke up in the middle of the night to Sora crying out in his sleep and clutching at her painfully with bone-white fingers. He was having a nightmare. Kairi wanted to wake him, but she didn’t quite dare.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns?

REVIEWS!


	15. Romanov Tavern

Since its chapter fifteen and all the mysteries are revealed, you can have the whole timeline now. Yay, right?

Timeline:

Current ages:  
-Vlad, 48  
-Kairi, 16  
-Sora, 14  
-Roxas, 23  
-Juune, 23  
-Riku, 26

1830: Vladimir Masterson’s birth (Anya, 17)  
-Masterson Family: owns boutique, dress-making shop and millinery, allows Vlad to have his “Blue Dress Secret” with Sora  
-1805-Dimitri Masterson, age 25, deceased  
-1813-Anastasia Romanov, age 17, currently 65  
-1822, they wed  
-1816-Franny Romanov, 14 when her sister marries, 62 when Vlad kills her

1840: Yuffie Kisaragi’s birth

1852: Riku Graham’s birth

1853: Vlad, age 23, take over the Masterson Boutique  
-(Anya, 40) 

1854: Vlad, age 24, weds first child-bride, Yuffie Kisaragi, age 14  
-(Anya, 41) Later that year, Anya kills Dimitri

1855: Yuffie’s son, Roxas, is born  
-Juune Romanov is born  
-(Anya, 42)

1856: Yuffie is killed in tragic carriage “accident”   
-(Vlad, 26)  
-(Anya,43) Anya causes Yuffie’s death, says Roxas caused it, and sends Roxas away to live with Yuffie’s brother, Vincent

1857: Namine Waters’ birth   
-(Vlad, 27) 

1862: Kairi Hart’s birth  
-(Vlad, 32)

1864: Sora Masterson’s birth  
-(Vlad, 34)  
-(Anya, 51)

1864, later: Rose-Red commits suicide jumping into the sea with Sora, but Anya saves Sora before the baby can drown

1872: March, Sory comes to the Masterson Estate at age 8  
-June, Vlad, age 42, weds second child-bride, Namine Waters, age 15  
-photograph of child Sory and “girl in white”  
-(Anya, 59)

March, 1872 to January, 1874: Namine’s diary

1874: Namine jumps to her death on the cliffs at age 17 after discovering Vlad and Sora’s “Blue Dress Secret”  
-Sora is 10, Vlad is 44, Anya is 61, Franny’s “screaming ocean”

1878: Vlad weds third child-bride, Kairi Hart, age 16  
-current

X X X

Franny’s directions brought Sora and Kairi to a powerful Tudor-style three-story building with many gables, a wrap-around porch, countless big leaded windows, and heavy front door of thick tarred and bolted beams. The swinging wooden sign read simply Romanov Tavern in big blocky letters. Several men were lingering outside on the porch with tankers of ale and eyed them suspiciously when they rode up. Kairi knew exactly how they looked, too—a girl riding with her skirts twisted up her legs, riding like a man, with a slender young boy hunched deep in his cloak with bruises on his face and dark circles beneath his blue eyes on two horses that had been rode hard and put away wet. 

Sora tied up their horses at the post and nervously stepped close to Kairi as she smoothed out her rumpled skirts. He didn’t like the way those men were looking at him, at her, at them—as if they were prey to be hunted and eaten. His eyes darted, but Kairi seemed completely unbothered. She fished Franny’s directions from her bodice and looked at them for what must have been the hundredth time, but they hadn’t changed. It was still a simple address, no name or further instructions. For all Kairi knew, Franny could have been coming here to hire an assassin to kill both her and Sora.

“Well, shall we go inside?” Kairi asked him, not really expecting an answer. Since they got up this morning, Sora hadn’t spoken a single word to her. She pushed open the door and let her eyes take a moment to adjust to the semi-darkness inside the tavern.

There was a massive stone fireplace dominating one wall with a pig roasting slowly on a spit just inside the hearth and from the ceiling hung three antler-chandeliers that were only partially lit and throwing off meager light. Along one wall was a long bar with a mirror and taps behind it and a pretty barmaid wiping out the inside of a tankard with a rag. The rest of the room was a haphazard ensemble of tables and chairs and three-legged stools and filled to the brim with a general amount of brawling men and laughing finely-dressed women. Someone grabbed Kairi’s arm, but Sora pushed him off before she even had a chance to see his face. Then, she felt Sora’s hand protectively on her back, but she could feel him shaking. 

“It’s okay,” she whispered to him. 

But at that moment, it became the very farthest thing from okay. Another man grabbed Kairi’s arm and pulled her harshly close, taking her right out of Sora’s grip. She could smell his heavy breath, thick with the scent of ale, and his beard prickled at her neck and face. “Well, well, what have we here?” he asked. “You are so incredibly pretty.”

Sora was a small shadow at her elbow. He was fourteen, younger than even Kairi and even more slender and fragile-looking, and there was nothing he could do to help her. He looked desperately on, those cerulean eyes of his shining. 

“Let me go!” Kairi shouted. 

Then, there was a terrible loud noise, like a shot, and all the yelling and brawling in the room went dead-silent. Everyone turned to face the barmaid. She was standing, hands on her hips and eyes narrowed, with a club slammed down on the bar. Was that what had made that incredible sound?

“HEY! There’s to be no fighting in my tavern! Earl, you lay off her or I’ll crack your ugly mug in like an egg.”

Earl, the big ugly brute who had grabbed Kairi, smiled sheepishly, showing a row of crooked yellow teeth. A few were even missing. “Aw, hell, Juune, you know I don’t mean nothing by it,” he slurred and put Kairi down on her feet. She stumbled backwards and felt Sora’s comforting presence against her back. “I’m a lover when I’m drunk and when I’m sober.”

“All the same, OUT!” The barmaid, Juune, snapped at him and pointed her club towards the door. 

Like a dog with is tail between his legs, Earl slunk out the door. There was uproarious laughter throughout the tavern and a collective banging of tankards. Then, as if nothing had happened, everyone resumed their previous activities. Juune waved at Kairi and Sora with her club and everyone jostled them down the bar until they were standing full in front of Juune. 

Up close and not wielding a club, Juune still proved to be a rather frightening young woman though she couldn’t have been much older than twenty-five. She had sheets of dark night-black hair framing her pretty heart-shaped face and big almond-shaped green eyes—dragon eyes with a ring of bright silver around the pupils, strange eyes that looked as if nothing got past them and forgot nothing that they saw. She was wearing a long form-fitting leather dress with slits in the sides up to her hips showing long bare legs and knee-high steel-toed boots with several loose belts hanging low around her hips. Her arms were encased in leather fingerless gloves to the elbows. She did not look like a girl you wanted to mess with. 

“You don’t look like you belong here,” Juune said and put away her club in its hiding place beneath the bar. 

Kairi chewed her lip, debating what to tell this strange young woman.

“It’s okay. You can tell me,” Juune said as if reading her mind.

Finally, she said, “My name is Kairi Hart and this is my brother, Sora. My aunt sent us here, but I’m not entirely sure why.”

“Your aunt?” Juune repeated. 

Kairi decided to stick as close to the truth as possible without giving up the exact truth. “Yes, my aunt Franny.”

“Franny, ah, come with me.” Juune waved to someone in the crowd and a pale young woman in a lacy red gown slipped behind the bar and smoothly took over. Then, Juune clambered over the bar, showing lots of white leg, and quickly led Sora and Kairi into a back room that had another small fireplace, a small table, a collection of stools, and another door that led somewhere. Then, she closed the door tightly and leaned against it. “If the government was smart, they’d pay barkeeps instead of spies. Barkeeps know everything, see everything, and tell everything for a price.”

Kairi’s heart began to pound. Sora’s fingers dug into her arm, tightly and icy-cold.

Juune laughed at the expressions on their faces and folded her arms across her belly. “Jeez, you two are white as ghosts. I guess that’s to be expected after everything you’re sure to have been through by now. So, where’s Franny?”

“You know Franny?” Kairi whispered.

“I know everyone,” Juune said with a shrug. “Franny sent a telegram saying she’d be coming down with you two almost three days ago and since you’re late and Franny’s not with you, I assume something bad happened. What’s happened, then?”

“Franny’s… um, she’s dead,” Kairi forced out.

All the color drained from her face and she whispered, “What?”

“Vlad Masterson killed her,” Kairi told her softly.

Juune slammed her fist into the wall, the skin on her knuckles splitting open. “Damn! Damn, damn! Damn it!” she swore, those strange dragon eyes gleaming. “I knew we should have gotten her out of there sooner! Damn it! God damn it!” Tears burned in the corners of her eyes. 

“You’re crying,” Kairi whispered.

“Of course I’m crying! She was my mother!” Juune shouted and punched the wall again. 

Sora slithered out of Kairi’s shadow and gently put his hand on Juune’s shoulder, guiding her to sit on a three-legged stool by the fire. There was something about him that put Juune at ease, maybe just his simple silence and hunted way of moving. Kairi produced a handkerchief from her bodice and passed it to Juune. The young woman offered her a small strained smile. 

“You are nice people. I see why mother wanted so badly to help you,” Juune said. “But, without all the lies, how about an introduction?”

“Well, I’m Kairi Masterson, but I’m thinking of returning to my family name—Kairi Hart—and this is Sora Masterson.”

“Rose-Red’s son,” Juune said with a smile and extended her small white hand to Kairi as if knowing Sora wouldn’t take it. “Juune Romanov.”

Kairi jolted back as if struck, yanking her hands away from Juune. “Romanov? You’re related to Anastasia?!”

“Anya?” Juune repeated, looking surprised by Kairi’s outburst. “Yes, of course. Franny was her little sister.”

“Franny Romanov,” Kairi whispered, “Romanov Tavern.” 

All the pieces came abruptly together like a light bulb going on in Kairi’s head. This was Franny’s daughter. Franny hadn’t been planning to kill Kairi and Sora after all. She had been going to save them, to protect them from Vlad. And now she was dead. Kairi felt loss in her chest, heavily like a great stone and as vast as a canyon. Poor, poor Franny…  
Sora was still crouched at Juune’s said, eyes gleaming like stars. 

“Well,” Juune said and sniffled. “It can’t be helped. Mom might be gone, but at least you’re here now. I have to been content with that. After all, Mom knew it was dangerous to be in Masterson house but she did it anyway… for Anya.” She stood up and brushed off her leather skirt. “It can’t be helped,” she repeated. Then, she opened the other door which was a big bustling kitchen and shouted with no trace of sorrow in her voice, “Roxas! Roxas Kisaragi! Come out here.”

Kairi’s heart skipped another beat. 

Sure enough, it was the sun-browned boy Kairi had met on the beach in the middle of the storm, though she almost didn’t recognize him with a shirt on. His blonde hair was a little bit messier and his blue eyes a little brighter, but he had the same good-natured easy-going please-don’t-leave-me smile that Kairi remembered. He was carrying a tray of shish kabobs almost absently, as if he had forgotten to put them down. “Juune, what is it—? Mrs. Masterson?!” He looked from Kairi to Juune and his blue eyes narrowed with something akin to suspicion. “What’s going on?”

“Mom’s dead, but these two made it here either way,” Juune explained to him.

Kairi blinked at them both. “Can you explain to me how you all know each other, please? I’m a little confused.”

“Of course,” Juune said and smiled though it was pained. 

Roxas pulled up a chair, resting his tray across his bent knees, and Kairi sat down beside him, but Sora remained crouched at Juune’s side like a stony beautiful gargoyle. Juune looked into the fire, listening to the sounds of the tavern—the laughter and shouts that seemed so incredibly far away—for a long moment. Then, she cleared the throat, turned to face Kairi and began her story without stopping.

“How much of the story do you know?” Juune began, but didn’t wait for an answer. “As I’m sure you know, the Masterson line is extremely twisted. The men are all hateful and cruel and they teach their sons to be exactly the same so that the line continues. Daughters do not exist as female children are done away with discretely at birth through ‘accidents.’ Women are beaten into submission if they so much as think about stopping their husbands, as Anya was. It broke her mind and spirit.”

Juune held up three fingers, ticking them off as she spoke. “But as powerful and cruel as the Masterson family is, there are two other families that can match them for power and also kindness—the Kisaragi and the Romanov families. It may seem strange, but these two have been trying to snuff out the Masterson line for years.”

She continued, lowering her hands to her lap. “That’s why Anastasia, the elder sister and ripe for the Masterson’s desire for child-brides, was married to Dimitri Masterson in an attempt to find out their secrets and destroy them from the inside, for lack of better wording. As I’m sure you know, she failed rather miserably, giving Dimitri two sons even more horrible than him. These two children and their terrible deeds made her lose her mind which was always fragile. It was then that Franny, the younger sister, was also sent in under a false name, but she was too late. Anya had already split herself into what was left of her innocence and did what she thought she needed to do.”

“I’m sure you know that Anya killed not only her husband, but also Vlad’s first wife, Yuffie Kisaragi,” Juune continued. “Yuffie was a well-trained ninja and assassin, almost a weapons specialist. We had hoped that she would be able to pick off the entire family—including the branches—without arousing their suspicion since she had such an innocent cheerful façade. But the Masterson men are masters of wooing a woman and she fell prey. Vlad made Yuffie fall in love with him and she gave him a son,” Juune tipped her head at Roxas. “Then, she got pregnant again and made the mistake of telling Anya in her fragile state of mind and Anya pushed her in front of the carriage and sent Roxas to Yuffie’s brother, Vincent.”

“Vincent was very clever—yes, he’s dead now—and he had Roxas change his name since he clearly did not yet carry the Masterson hatred. Roxas is now endeared to our purpose,” Juune said with a smile. “Shortly after that, Sora was born to Rose-Red. Dirk tormented his poor wife-prostitute to her death and she leaped off the cliffs with her baby, but Anya plucked him from the water for reasons were are unsure of. We think it may have been,” she glanced between Roxas and Sora, “the blue eyes. No one in the Masterson family has such beautiful innocent eyes.”

“We wanted to rescue him from being spread around through the branches of the Masterson line. They are not as terrible as the direct line, but we were sure he would suffer all the same.” Juune glanced at Sora, but he was looking away into the fire. “I am so sorry,” she whispered to him, but he seemed not to notice.

Juune continued, “We hoped to simply kill Vlad before he could marry again since Dirk had already drunk himself to death and the line was growing smaller. But Vlad got himself a pretty little shield, Namine Waters. According to Franny, Namine loved Vlad, but when Sora came to live with him after his eight years of torment. She dug deep into Vlad’s terrible secrets of what he did to his beautiful nephew though Franny would not tell me exactly what he did and found them out. Vlad was going to send her away and do away with Sora in secret, but she refused to go and threw herself into the sea. With her gone, Vlad would not have to kill Sora. She saved him at the cost of her own life.”

Sora shivered, hugging himself tightly even though he was so close to the fire.

“Vlad tormented Sora for a few more years, using him as a shield. Sora is so mistrustful that even when Franny brought him to the beach and helped him to meet Roxas, he was still unwilling to even contemplate incurring Vlad’s wrath, even if it meant his salvation. Then, as you know, he married you and you have been here for the rest of the story.” Juune brushed her hands together as if brushing off the unpleasantness of her tale. 

For a long while, they were all quiet, save Roxas who passed about his plate of shish kabobs. Juune was the only one able to eat, but she did it absently and without tasting the meat and seared vegetables. Her eyes were far-seeing. Sora put his hands close to the fire as if to reach into the flames. Kairi went over everything in her mind, awed.

Finally, Juune asked, “Anything else you’d like to know?”

“Yes.”

Juune’s dragon eyes flashed. “What?”

“Can I join you? I want to kill Vlad Masterson.”

Juune smiled.

X X X

Overall, kind of a recap chapter, which every story needs at one point, but there was so much mystery in this story that I thought you all deserved to have it spelled out rather clearly. This was your spelling-out chapter with timeline, recap, and only ONE new character! Yay!

Questions, comments, concerns?

Reviews!


	16. Screams and Nightmares

Because I got a question, I just want to clear up that Anastasia and Anya are the same person.

X X X

Like some kind of monster raised from the depths of fiery Hell itself, Sora leaped from his crouched position beside the fire and threw himself at Kairi, shrieking like a banshee. Roxas was so surprised that he fell backwards off his chair and Juune leaped to her feet with her hand at her waist as if to draw a dagger from somewhere, but she was unarmed so far as Kairi could tell. Sora flung his thin arms around Kairi’s shoulders, knocking her backwards off her seat so that they both smashed into the floor. His body was burning hot and he was still making that sound. Kairi struggled to get her hand over his mouth, anything to stop that awful sound from escaping him. 

“Sora! Sora, please, what is it?!” Kairi demanded when she finally managed to silence him with her hand over his mouth. “Just tell me.”

He clutched her body tightly and she could feel his mouth opening and closing—gasping like a fish out of water—but so sound came out. Then, as abruptly as his outburst had begun, it stopped. His eyelids drooped closed and he collapsed against her, breathing deep and fast. He was unconscious. Gingerly, Kairi stroked his hair, smoothing it down over the back of his neck and against her throat where it lay like fine chocolate silk.

Roxas slowly got to his feet and righted his chair. “What the heck was that?” he asked. 

But Kairi didn’t have an answer for him. “I don’t suppose you have a place we could stay for the night,” she asked Juune. 

The barkeep lowered her hand form her waist and slipped her palm along the ribbon of exposed thigh. “As a matter of fact, we have a couple empty rooms above the tavern and you’re more than welcome to one of them,” she said. “Roxas, can you show them up? Now that we know Vlad is going to be on the prowl, I want to get back behind the bar and keep an eye on the door. I’ll signal you.”

“What’s the signal?” Roxas asked her as he gently lifted Sora off of Kairi and helped her to her feet. 

Juune smiled and said, “The usual.” Then, she pushed out through the door and it swung shut behind her. 

“What’s the signal?” Kairi asked Roxas and opened the other door for him since his arms were full of Sora. 

He looked unhappy and was quiet for a long while as he led Kairi through the kitchens, up a winding staircase, and finally into a small room furnished with a simple bed and low dresser with attached bath. He laid Sora gently on the bed, as if laying down a small child. He brushed some dark chair away from Sora’s pale cheeks almost absently and turned to face Kairi. He stared at her for a long moment, as if deciding something about her. 

Only then did Roxas finally say, “A scream.”

…

Roxas had blown out of the room like a summer storm—sudden and violent, slamming the door behind him—so quickly that Kairi wound up chasing him down the long hallway. She was concerned for their horses and wanted to go downstairs and check on them, but Roxas promised to put them in the stable and went away just as quickly as he had left the room. He had that look on his face again, that look that said he never expected to see her again. And, knowing what she knew about him now, Kairi could understand that. He had been catching nothing but tidal waves and great storms his entire young life—his mother being murdered, being sent away, having her death hang over his head like a black banner. With such an unlucky streak in such superstitious times, people must have run away from him at one time or another. 

Kairi put her hand to her stomach. It had been almost a month. When would she begin to show? A more troubling thought struck her, but she didn’t dare speak it aloud, even to herself. She believed that would give the words a power all their own to ruin her life. She forced her thoughts to return to Roxas, to his hurt beautiful eyes, his eyes so much like Sora’s…

“Sora,” Kairi whispered, tasting the beautiful sky-blue name on her lips. Then, she returned to the room, debated for a long moment, and then lay down cautiously beside him. It was dark, the heavy drapes pulled tightly over the windows. Kairi hadn’t slept well the night before and now, she knew they were safe. Her eyes grew heavy and, within minutes, she was asleep.

Beside her, Sora dreamed… had _nightmares…_

_He was ten years old and back in his room again, a few weeks after Namine died. He was just lying on the covers, imagining that he could hear her voice reading to him and her fingers stroking his hair and that the ghosts of the pain he had been through were so very far away like they always were when she was around. He closed his eyes, feeling tears seep out regardless. Then, his uncle was at the threshold of the door, entering without knocking. Sora felt his hungry eyes almost like a physical touch and squeezed his eyes even tighter closed. Maybe, he thought, if I don’t open my eyes, this will al turn out to be just a horrible dream._

_But it wasn’t. It never was._

_“Get up.” Vlad’s voice was like a terrible knife, so sharp and threatening and oh-so very dangerous. Sora always felt that his voice was carving the flesh from his body until he swore the older man could just reach into his naked chest, grab his heart, and squeeze the life from him. He felt weak and powerless, vulnerable, in the wake of that voice. “Strip.”_

_Sora rose from the bed, limbs heavy and heart pounding. He could feel his insides quivering with fear as if he would just melt inside the shell of his body at any moment, but he didn’t. He never did, not matter how much he wanted to just die of the fear and shame. Wordlessly and trying to hold back the sobs bottled up in his mouth, Sora slipped his black funeral-mourning shirt from his shoulders and stepped out of his pants. He didn’t have any underwear now and he was naked beneath those dark night-black trousers._

_“You look dead-pale with all that black,” Vlad said to him. It was as if he didn’t care that Namine was dead, poor beautiful feather-soft porcelain-angelic-white Namine, his only friend. Sora wanted to cry out, to sob, to unleash all his sadness and fear and fury, but he clenched his teeth as if that alone could stop the sounds from escaping. “Touch yourself. Put those dove-white hands all over your body.”_

_And Sora did, because he had no choice. He touched his long collarbones, his skull-like shoulders, his flat starving stomach, stabbing sharp bones of his hips, the curve of his ribs, the hollowness of his chest. His flesh was peeling away to the bone as Vlad stared at him, watched him, ate him alive._

_“Touch yourself.” There was something different in his voice now, hatred and a nameless threat. But Vlad would never rape Sora, push into him like he did a woman… not like Sora’s father, not like cruel drunk Dirk who used to come to him during the dark night and tear him apart from the inside out. Vlad was a different kind of monster. “Sora,” he continued as if tasting the name. “What a disgusting girly name.”_

_Sora shuddered and timidly touched his boyhood with cold trembling fingers. He missed Namine so much. He wanted her to save him so badly. But she wasn’t going to rise from the grave and come to his rescue with glowing white angel wings._

_“Touch it,” Vlad snarled at him._

_Sora jolted as if struck, shuddering and trembling, and wrapped his hand tightly around his shaft._

_“Are you really a little boy? You must be a little girl with a name like that.”_

_Sora didn’t know. He didn’t know what little girls looked like or what little boys looked like. He knew what his father looked like, so big and thick and like a spear to be impaled on. Sora was so much smaller and softer, hairless and as pale as milk. Was he really a little girl? Vlad seemed to think so. He tormented Sora with those thoughts._

_“I think your wretched name should be changed now that everyone who ever knew it is dead.” He said dead especially sharp and cruelly and bitterly, as if to torture Sora specifically with thoughts of Namine as she leaped like a bird over the black cliffs, arms spread and pale skirts flying. Sora had been there, after all. He had seen her jump. He had screamed his lungs out and his throat hoarse at the edge of the cliffs, looking down as her body trashed against the rocks._

_A small animal sound escaped Sora’s throat and he clutched his hands to his chest. He didn’t want to be here, naked before Vlad and touching himself for Vlad’s horrible pleasure like he used to have to touch his father. He wanted to follow Namine, to turn into a guardian stone in the cold blue ocean._

_“Sory,” Vlad said sharply._

_This new name was like a stone in Sora’s chest, sharp and icy-cold. “No, please,” Sora whispered. “I… I want to keep it.”_

_The slap came out of nowhere, incredibly hard across his tender face. The blow knocked him over and he fell on the cold floor, striking his face once more on the tile. Hot tears welled up in his beautiful sky-blue eyes, spilling over his night-dark lashes and flooding down his face._

_Vlad’s lips curved up in a crooked grin and he knelt down beside Sora. His fingers were like knives on Sora’s face, digging in to the bone, to the core. He acted as if he wanted to lift Sora’s face from his skull, peeling the flesh off his bones, but he only said softly, “Everyone who knew that curse is dead now. You won’t have it anymore, Sory.” He let go of Sory’s face, hurling him at the cold floor. “Touch yourself,” Vlad snarled and the flesh peeled off Sory’s chest. He could see his heart beating, see the blood pouring out, see his life seeping away. He was dying. He was going to join Namine now. For some reason, the thought of his death did not trouble him in the least. He heard her screaming as she fell into the ocean… screaming, screaming, screaming…_

Someone was screaming.

…

Kairi woke with a start. Sora was pressed against her side, so warm, but the moment she opened her eyes, he jolted upright as if he had been lying awake beside her for hours. She could see nothing but darkness outside the window. It was still night.

What had woken her? 

Had it been Sora’s nightmares? He looked so pale and terrified that she was sure he had been wracked with the terrible dreams.

Had it been some other sound in the night? Maybe a bird or someone shouting in the tavern downstairs. 

Then, she realized, someone was screaming. 

Juune was screaming.

The signal! 

Kairi flew out of bed the second Roxas exploded into the room. The door hit the wall so hard that a few chunks of plaster flaked down from the ceiling. He was panting, blonde hair mussed, and had a leather backpack thrown over his shoulders and a cloak over his arm. “We need to go,” Roxas panted. “Juune is stalling him for as long as she can, but I don’t want to put her at risk for any longer than necessary. We need to go!”

Kairi was already on her feet, suddenly happy that she had slept in her clothes. She flung her fur-lined cloak around her shoulders and grabbed her satchel. Sora was still sitting, stunned, on the bed. Kairi put his cloak around his shoulders and pulled him to his feet. Surprisingly, he caught her hand and clutched it. 

The three of them raced down the long dim hallway, down a second staircase, out the back door, and into the stables. The stable hand had already saddled the horses for them and was waiting outside the gate with the reins in his hands. He was nothing but the whites of his eyes and the flash of his white teeth in the darkness and asked Roxas nervously, “What about Juune?”

Roxas glanced back, but couldn’t see anything happening inside the tavern. He heard the thunderous crash of Juune’s club and the muffled sound of her shouting. “She’ll be alright,” he said and swung into the saddle of the midnight-dark horse. 

Sora had Kairi had already mounted up and were staring at him with different expressions on their faces. The three of them raced off into the night, leaving the glowing amber lights of the tavern far behind them. The night stretched on like a heavy velvet blanket all speckled with diamond stars. The moon hung like a small crescent smile in the inky-blackness, swollen lips and white teeth. The trees were so dark, looming like monsters across the road, branches reaching out like clasping fingers. The night was deathly quiet. No crickets were chirping, no night birds cried, no owls hooted, nothing. It was so quiet. They rode for what felt like an eternity. The horses were breathing heavily. 

But finally Roxas said, “Here, we can rest here. It’s safe.”

“Safe?” Kairi whispered. Her voice was drowsy with exhaustion, but when she looked up, she saw something shocking and familiar—a neat little graveyard and a quaint white chapel. It was the church, the church she had ridden too with Sora so long ago and talked to the priest with the soft sweet voice. This was Father Riku Graham’s church!

Roxas had already dismounted and was leading his horse into the graveyard. He hadn’t even reached the steps when the door of the church opened, spilling out warm light and the scent of incense. Riku was wearing his clerical robes, had a quilt wrapped tightly around his shoulders, and carried a lantern. “Roxas? Is that you?” he called, voice so lovely, through the night. 

“Yeah. Did Juune send a telegram?”

Riku nodded and lifted his lantern a little higher. “Kairi? Sora?”

Kairi swung down from the saddle and let the reins drop as Sora had told her to. She heard Sora dismount as well, but he stumbled and crashed into her back. Then, he was clutching her hand again. His skin was so cold that she gently put her arm around his waist and held him close. 

“Come inside,” the kind priest said. “Roxas, if you’d be so kind as to put the horses in the stable out back?”

Roxas nodded.

Inside, the church was dim and haunted-looking. The stained glass windows let in colorful moonlight and the candles flickered eerily, flashing strange twisted shadows on the decorated walls. The pews were set in orderly rows, polished to a shine, and the altar was draped with a white cloth. Behind it, the red lamp was lit, signifying Christ was in the building. It looked as if Riku had been waiting up for them, praying or standing at the windows. Riku led them behind the altar, swept back a rug, and pulled up a trapdoor that reached down into darkness. 

“What is that?” Kairi whispered. “Are you imprisoning us?”

Sora squeezed her hand tightly. 

“No,” Riku explained. “These are underground tunnels. The Kisaragis and the Romanovs had used these tunnels for centuries. It’s the safest place for you to be. There are even several exits and I recently had electricity put in. There are beds and everything set up for you. You both look exhausted.”

Roxas appeared in the threshold, coming in from outside. “It’s alright. You can trust him,” he said with a smile.

Hesitantly, Kairi sat down and put her legs into the mouth of the trapdoor. “Roxas, are you coming down?”

“In a little while,” he said. “I need to talk to Riku. Just get some rest.”

She nodded and then leaped into the darkness. It smelled of earth and she could make out a small room with a low ceiling and a single bare bulb once her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. Five small beds were set up on the floor and the floor was covered in a thick woven rug. Three dark yawning tunnels went off in every direction. Once Kairi turned on the light, she felt safety wrap her blanket. She let out her breath and called up to Sora that it was alright. After a moment, he dropped in behind her. 

Kairi smiled at him and said, “We should get some rest. I have a feeling it’s going to be a big day tomorrow.” She chose a mattress, lay down, and wrapped herself tightly in her fur-lined cloak. 

Sora lingered at her bedside, looking distraught and nervous. Finally, he whispered, “Can I sleep with you, please?”

Kairi was startled, but she smiled and nodded. She slid over, lifted her cloak, and made room for him beside her. He nestled in almost eagerly and Kairi felt the heat of his body begin to seep into her skin. She cradled him in her arms, stroking his hair and his back. He was stiff as a board, barely breathing, so Kairi began to hum a lullaby her mother used to sing to her. Eventually, she felt Sora relax against her and his breath became deep and even. Smiling softly, Kairi fell asleep quickly. She was long asleep when Roxas jumped down into the underground room so she didn’t hear him laugh softly and pull another blanket up over them, but she noticed the extra quilt when she woke in a morning and saw Roxas’s smile.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns?

REVIEWS! What is it with this story? All These Lives got about twenty reviews per chapter and this one is lucky to get three. What the heck happened? REVIEWS!


	17. The Trinity

The beginning of the reasoning behind EVERYTHING! It’s going to get messy so pay attention! And please refer to both the complete timeline in Chapter 15 and the surprise at the end of this one. That should help everyone (and me) keep it all straight!

Kind of a short chapter, but a lot of information.

Oh, and I LOVED all the reviews I got for the last chapter. Why is it that I only get reviews if I bitch at you all? Rawr!

X X X

Kairi carefully got out of bed, trying not to wake Sora and gingerly untangling herself from the blankets. When she unwound his arms from around her waist, he moaned softly and stretched out his thin white arms as if in search of her lost body heat. Roxas was not in the little underground room and there was some light filtering in through the floorboards above her head. Putting her back into it, Kairi pushed up the trapdoor and stepped out into the morning brightness of the church. Roxas and Father Riku Graham were sitting in one of the pews, talking in quiet voices. They both looked up when she crawled out of the hole in the floor and then closed it up gently behind herself.

Roxas smiled. “Good morning, Kairi,” he called. “How did you sleep?”

“Alright,” she said and came to sit beside him. “But, how did Vlad find us so fast yesterday?”

Roxas rolled his shoulders. “The Mastersons know that the Kisaragis and the Romanovs have been trying to snuff them out.” 

“But Dimitri married Anya Romanov and Vlad married Yuffie Kisaragi. If they knew, then why?”

“They’re cocky bastards,” Roxas explained. “They know that they can woo women into loving them and if they can’t, they’ll just kill them or wait for them to kill themselves. I’m sure, for a period of time, even you were in love with Vlad.”

Kairi wanted to deny it, but Roxas was right. She had loved Vlad. She touched her stomach. The mass and vile amounts of sex they had had was proof enough growing in her womb. “I don’t understand one thing. Why are the Mastersons such cruel people, cruel enough that you would want to kill them?”

Roxas looked nervous. “I don’t know exactly what happened. No one really does, but…” he hesitated, glancing at Riku. Finally, the priest stood up from the pew and went outside. “I think the three families used to care nothing for each other. In fact they didn’t even know each other, none the less care to snuff out one of the lines. It all started with the Trinity family.”

“The Trinity family?”

“Yes. Triplets were born to the Lady Trinity and they were the cataclysm between the three families.” Roxas fidgeted. “The girls grew up, of course, and were sought after by many men, but their parents refused to let them marry.

“The eldest of the three was Star Trinity. I’m told that she was strong-willed, trained in the fighting arts by her father even though she was a girl, and watched over her two younger sisters like a hawk. Apparently, she even had a bird’s eyes—gold and dangerous—to go with her russet tresses that she kept boyishly short. She wore Chinese dresses of autumn colors—reds and browns—buttoned to her throat and trousers underneath. Even still, she was the most sought after of the three. 

“The middle child was Freya Trinity. She was the catalyst. She was said to be the most beautiful with long spun-gold tresses and slanted green cat-like eyes. She wore only silk gowns that clung to her body and a strand of pearls and fangs around her throat. As beautiful as she was though, there was something… dangerous about her, people said. With a simple look, she could make men fall over themselves in a hurry to please her. 

“The youngest child was Evangeline Trinity. She was fair and lovely, kind and merciful, a faerie-child so pale and sweet that people were sure such a coarse woman as Lady Trinity couldn’t have possibly given life to her. She had long ruby-red tresses, cerulean-blue eyes, and long slender fingers with a talent for the piano and for healing.” 

From his pocket, Roxas produced a sheet of water-stained paper and handed it to Kairi. Drawn neatly were three beautiful young women with their arms around each other. Kairi could easily tell which one was Star—wearing a quiver of arrows over her shoulder—Freya—a strange expression on her beautiful face and her lips in a flat little smile—Evangeline—dressed in white and clasping her slender hands together as if in prayer. 

The Trinity sisters. 

“What happened?” Kairi whispered as if speaking to loudly would bring the strange trio back to life. 

Roxas shrugged. “They married. Star married into the Kisaragi family, Evangeline into the Romanovs, and Freya into the Mastersons.”

A shiver ran through Kairi. Freya’s strange expression, the catalyst. “Freya did it, didn’t she?”

Roxas nodded. “Freya’s strangeness went into her husband. He began to hurt his servants where he had always been kind and no one knew what he did to Freya behind closed doors. Soon, she was pregnant and gave him twins—a son and a daughter. The son had all of Freya’s strangeness—her slanted eyes, her pale hair, her dangerous looks—and she even named her son Frey. The daughter was like an ugly duckling, out of place in the Masterson family. Then, one day, she was just gone. After Freya’s daughter disappeared, both Star and Evangeline came to the Masterson estate to console their middle sister, but Freya was far from distraught. It was almost as if she didn’t even care.”

“How could she not care?”

Roxas didn’t know, but he continued his story. “Star decided to stay at the house, talking to Freya’s husband, while Evangeline went in search of Freya’s daughter.” Then, he fell silent as if he didn’t know what to say now. 

“What happened?” Kairi asked him eagerly. 

“That’s just it. No one really knows.”

“Well, what about Star and Evangeline?”

“The next day, they both went home to their husbands and spoke nothing of their sister. Both girls became listless, almost as if the life had been drained from them. Then, the first assassin arrived at the Kisaragi house. Being a clan of trained fighters, the assassin had no chance at his intended target, but that same night another showed up at the Romanov family and killed Evangeline. This was the only thing that brought Star back to life somehow and her listlessness vanished. Enraged, she rode to Freya’s home at the Masterson estate and slaughtered her sister before plunging over the cliffs and into the sea herself.”

“She jumped into the sea?” Kairi whispered. 

Roxas nodded. “Those cliffs have stolen a lot of lives in all these years.”

“But, if both the girls died and only Freya had children, how did the Kisaragi and Romanov lines continue?”

Here, Roxas looked incredibly unsure. “I’ve heard a lot of things. I’ve heard that Freya’s husband never married and only his son carried on the line. I’ve heard he raped a young barmaid or that he married again or that he simply found a baby washed ashore on his private beach. As for Evangeline, she was nine months pregnant when she was killed and they did manage to pluck the baby from her stomach before it died. Star, though, never gave the Kisaragis any heirs. One day, almost ten years after her death, a child just showed up on the doorstep of one of the Kisaragi’s dojos and said her name was Polaris, the North Star.”

“Could she have been Star’s child?”

“There’s no way Star could have survived and they found her body washed up on the beach,” Roxas explained.

Kairi was quiet for a long moment. “I still don’t understand. Why did it all happen?”

Roxas shook his head. “I don’t know. No one knows.” He hesitated again before confessing. “I have my own theory about what is happening now, at least to me. The lines joined when I was born and somehow, that neutralized whatever was in Freya.”

“Joined?” Right, Roxas was Yuffie Kisaragi and Vlad Masterson’s child. She looked at his eyes, cerulean blue, like Evangeline’s. “Blue eyes,” she whispered. “What ever happened to Evangeline’s child?”

Roxas touched his face. “I think, maybe, she joined the lines somehow as well and gave me these eyes.”

“Anya has blue eyes, too.”

“All the Romanovs do.”

Kairi stared at him, perplexed. “Juune doesn’t and Franny’s eyes were grey-blue.”

Roxas stared at her hard. He looked about to say something, but bit his tongue for a long moment. “I was thinking about Sora, too. He has the same eyes as me.”

“Rose-Red and Dirk Masterson.”

“No one knows Rose-Red’s last name. She was just a simple street whore.”

Something struck Kairi. “What if Freya’s daughter lived and had children?”

“Then there would be far more Mastersons than we think.”

Kairi wasn’t so sure. “Bear with me. What if Rose-Red was one of Freya’s lost daughter’s children? Then, when the Masterson lines joined and Sora was born, what if Freya’s danger was neutralized again?” 

Roxas gnawed his lip. “I don’t know. I feel like we need a family tree, but there isn’t one. The Trinity family has been dead for almost two hundred years.”

Kairi was quiet, letting him think. Her thoughts were on Freya Trinity-Masterson. Wasn’t there a dark god named Freya? No, Freya was everything—the goddess of love, beauty, fertility, gold, war, and death. “Roxas,” she whispered. “What if Freya was real evil, like we read about in the bible?”

“You mean, like the devil?”

Kairi nodded. She thought Roxas looked pale, but it might have just been the light.

“That’s not possible,” he said and shook his head as if to banish the thought. 

“I mean it, Roxas, what if she was evil?”

“She was just a human, Kairi. Just a human,” he said sharply. Then, he stood up from the pew and paced back and forth a little. Finally, he sat down beside Kairi again and heaved a deep sigh. “I’m not superstitious, but…” He didn’t say anything else after that because Riku came inside with one of his parishioners seeking guide prayers. Wordlessly, Roxas went outside, head bowed like a child that had done something very wrong. 

Kairi smoothed her dress over her thighs and chewed her lip. A moment later, she followed after him. 

Beneath the floorboards, Sora had lain awake, listening, the entire time.

X X X

Name: Star Trinity-Kisaragi  
Hair: dark brown  
Eyes: hawk-like, gold  
Traits: the warrior, strong

Name: Freya Trinity-Masterson  
Hair: golden  
Eyes: cat-like, green  
Traits: dangerous, strange, unknown

Name: Evangeline Trinity-Romanov  
Hair: ruby-red  
Eyes: cerulean blue  
Traits: soft, sweet, innocent

The little profiles are more for my benefit than yours so I don’t have to keep going back through this chapter and looking to see who married who, and who looks like what, and how to bloody spell Evangeline! I wanted to name her just Angel, but then my life would have been too easy. This plot is so twisted and there are so many characters that it’s hard to keep track of. Bugger on myself. Why on earth did I choose to write a mystery?!

Questions, comments, concerns?

New speculations?

Confusion?

Freya?

REVIEWS!


	18. Return to the Masterson Estate

So, with the Trinity Sisters, now pretty much everyone is related through marriage. When I drew out a family tree, it’s actually much less confusing than it sounds. But, don’t get me wrong, it’s still pretty confusing. With the big empty block of time between the Trinity sisters and what’s happening now with Vlad, it’s not as bad as it sounded originally. 

Let’s see here…

-Star Trinity married into the Kisaragi clan, but died before she had any children. Ten years later, a child named Polaris appeared at the Kisaragi dojo. This child may or may not have somehow been Star’s.

-Freya Trinity is the confusing one. She married into the Masterson family and had two children—Frey, who possesses the same dark strangeness that she does, and Nina, who vanished when she was very young.

-Evangeline Trinity married into the Romanov family, but was killed when she was nine months pregnant. Her child—Rose—carried on the family line. 

After that, it’s really not too bad. *shrug*

-Franny and Anastasia are sisters on the Romanov side. 

-Franny has a daughter, Juune Romanov. 

-Anya marries Dimitri and has two sons—Dirk and Vlad. 

-Dirk marries Rose-Red (last name unknown) and has one son, Sora. 

-Vlad marries first Yuffie and has one son, Roxas. (And Yuffie’s brother, Vincent, takes in Roxas after his sister’s death.) Then, he marries Namine and has no children. Now, he is married to Kairi. 

Leaving aside that Freya has a dark unknown even more confusing secret, that’s actually the whole family tree right there. Cleared up? Still have questions? (Wow, long author’s note, but there are lots of things to explain so you can all keep up.)

X X X

Vladimir Masterson paced back and forth at the edge of the black cliffs, pausing some times to look down into the churning sea that had claimed so many lives. He felt lightheaded at the sheer drop, the death that lurked there at the bottom in the jagged rocks and crashing waves. Then, he thought about the cave… the dark abyss carved into the side of the cliffs as if some great monster had tunneled a portal deep into Hell itself. 

The cave… 

Freya’s cave…

…

Sora Masterson, Kairi Hart, and Roxas Kisaragi spent the remainder of the week hiding out at Father Riku Graham’s Church. While they were there, Kairi cut her long red hair short and taught herself to bind her small stomach so that the baby wouldn’t show when the time came. Sora was as silent as ever, often spending hours sitting outside at Namine’s grave as if he could see her. Roxas didn’t talk anymore about the Trinity Sisters, but Freya was in Kairi’s thoughts and nightmares constantly. 

Then, finally, Juune sent a telegram saying it was finally safe for them to come back to the Romanov Tavern. 

Almost eagerly, Roxas was packed up and mounted within minutes, but Kairi hesitated, thinking of her vow to kill her husband, Vladimir Masterson. She was constantly plagued with nightmares of Freya leaning over her, touching her stomach, whispering that she had a little Masterson growing right in her belly and that it would never be over. She woke up, sweating and cold in the night. Sometimes, Sora was awake as well, staring at her through the darkness with those eyes that seemed to glow in the dark. When he looked at her, she always felt as if he knew her every thought. Most of the time, though, he was blessedly asleep… or pretending rather well. 

Roxas, on the other hand, was always dead-asleep and sometimes snoring, whenever Kairi woke in the night. He might have had Sora’s eyes, but he was nothing like Sora. And now, he was eagerly looking down at Kairi while Sora lingered hesitantly, like a cool shadow at her side. He held her hand so often now that she almost didn’t notice anymore.   
Kairi ducked her head into the collar of her cloak, put up her hood even though it was a warm day, and mounted up. She watched Sora swinging into Tiger Lily’s saddle and Kairi leaned down to pat Polly’s flank absently as she always saw Sora do. Roxas gave his horse an eager kick and they set off back towards the tavern. 

When Kairi looked back, Father Riku was standing on the steps, waving and smiling. For some reason, Kairi wanted to turn around and hide in his church again. She had a very bad feeling and put her hand to her stomach.

But everything was quiet and normal at the Romanov Tavern. 

The stable hand took the horses, Roxas hurried off to talk to Juune, and Sora and Kairi went upstairs to the room they had been staying in before Vlad found them. Later, Juune came up to talk to Kairi about killing Vlad. As badly as Kairi wanted to back out, she just couldn’t. Juune’s eyes were glowing with excitement. She was convinced that Kairi would be the one finally able to destroy the Mastersons and Kairi didn’t have the heart to crush her. Instead, she went along with Juune, smiling and nodding, but all the while she could feel Sora’s eyes on her back. 

…

Over the next few months, Juune trained Kairi and Sora, because he insisted by soundlessly standing in the rear courtyard where they trained each night, in the art of several different weapons. By the end of the fourth month of training, Kairi was wrapping her swollen belly so tightly that she couldn’t breathe, but she could shoot a bow, swing a club, brandish both sword and dagger, and even awkwardly bounce around a spear (which was definitely not her favorite weapon). Against her wishes, Juune had taught her a little hand-to-hand combat. Kairi had been so terrified of Juune being close to her bound pregnant stomach. 

Sora, on the other hand, loved learning hand-to-hand combat. He was so graceful, so fluid, almost cat-like. Within two weeks, Sora could even beat Juune and had started sparring with Roxas who he was able to beat within another month. Sometimes, Juune and Roxas teamed up on them and it was always close, but he could beat them even paired. Surprisingly, though, Sora never hurt them, not even a scratch or a bruise. Kairi had never seen him as happy as after he defeated them. Sadly, she thought his fascination with learning to defend himself stemmed from all the terrible things he had been through in his past. 

After Kairi finished the morning’s training with Juune, she returned to the room she shared with Sora. As always, he was sitting on the bed with his legs folded neatly and a book open in his lap. He didn’t look up when she came into to room, but she knew that he was happy she was back. Sora didn’t talk much anymore. He was so silent, more like a ghost than a human boy, but Kairi was almost thankful for that now. When she was sick, when she lay on her side in bed at night clutching her swollen belly and crying, when she woke in the night with nightmares, he never asked her anything. Sometimes, he touched her, held her, as if he loved her. But most of the time, he was just a soft soothing presence close to her.

Kairi quickly stripped of the slacks Juune had given her for training, unbound her stomach, and sat own just to breathe. It hurt so much to bind her baby, to crush it into her so Juune couldn’t see that she was pregnant, but… crippling fear always crushed Kairi’s soul at the thought of letting the barmaid know about the child inside her. She could be sure why, but she was so afraid. Once she had caught her breath, she slipped into a soft gown and sat beside Sora on the bed. He still didn’t look up. 

“I think… I’ll be going back to the Masterson estate soon.”

Sora’s head snapped up as if he had been slapped. “No.”

“Sora, I have to go back. Soon, I won’t be able to hide this,” she caressed her stomach, “anymore and I’ll be too big to hurt him.”

He was still adamant. “No.”

“You can stay here.”

Again, he looked as if she had slapped him and he practically shouted at her, “No!” 

Gently, Kairi took his shoulders in her hands and drew him into a hug. She felt his hands on her swollen stomach, touching her tenderly. He did that a lot these days as if he could feel the cricket-like movements beneath her flesh. Kairi had never asked him if he could. 

“No,” he whispered.

This reminded Kairi of when he had flung himself at her, screaming like a banshee, the day they met Juune and Kairi decided that she wanted to kill Vlad. It was almost as if he knew something that she didn’t, then and now. 

“No,” he whispered again.

“You can stay here with Roxas and Juune. You don’t have to go back with me.”

He pushed her back and looked right into her eyes. His eyes looked like little pieces of sky. “I am coming,” he said firmly. “But I don’t want you to go. I don’t want you to go…”

“I have to go.”

Sora put his hands on her stomach again, staring at the swollen baby-bump. 

Kairi put her hands over his. “Can you feel the baby moving?” she whispered.

“Yes,” he whispered. “Speaking, too.” He lowered his face and rested his cheek on her belly, letting his blue eyes slide closed as he rested there comfortably. 

Kairi wanted to ask him what he meant. How could her baby speak to him, but there was a knock on the door and Kairi had to quickly push Sora off, wrap her stomach, and answer the door. Roxas was waiting on the other side and asked Sora to go down into the courtyard and spar with him. Sora was always ready to spar, smiled that thin little smile of his, and followed Roxas out of the room. Kairi lay down on the bed, just thinking, and then began to pack. Then, she went downstairs, told Juune she was leaving and absorbed a few of the barmaid’s hugs, went to the stable to get her horse, and rode away from the tavern as if the devil himself was chasing her… as if Freya was chasing her. By the time Sora finished his spar with Roxas and returned to the room he shared with Kairi, she was long gone. 

…

The Masterson estate looked exactly as it had when Kairi first saw it. The mansion was a big imposing structure perched high on the cliffs above the slate-grey churning sea. It was all dark-stained wood and huge picture windows that looked out over the sea and big spanning decks with pretty wicker furniture with fluffy dark-colored cushions and candy-striped dark umbrellas. But now, with its dark history looming in the dank cloudy sky, it looked more sinister. It looked like something haunted and Kairi imagined she saw people standing on the cliffs as if waiting for their execution, but no one was really there. There was a small similarly styled boathouse and a long dock at the end of a winding path that led to a private beach with a long strip of perfect white sand. Both had an incredible view of the distant white-and-red lighthouse. A burgeoning garden surrounded the house, its color and beauty undaunted by the dreary day, and Kairi could see the stables peeking through the trees. 

Had it really been almost four months since she had run from this place with Sora? 

Kairi dismounted around the bend of the road, unbound her swollen stomach, smoothed the fabric over the swell of her belly, and tucked the long knife Juune had given her into her satchel. Then, she swung herself back into the saddle with some difficulty and rode toward the dark house. When she knocked on the door, it took a long moment for someone to answer. Then, Vlad was standing in the doorway, looking out at her as if she was someone risen from the dead. 

“Kairi?” he whispered. 

“Hi, Vlad,” she murmured. His eyes were on her stomach and they hadn’t moved and inch. 

“Y-you’re…”

“Yes,” she said softly and touched her stomach. 

Unlike Sora, Vlad did not reach out to touch her stomach. Instead, he stepped aside and allowed her back into the cold mansion. Kairi hesitated, reminded herself of why she was here, and then walked boldly into the house. Behind her, the skies opened up and began to pour down ice-cold rain. Thunder snarled and lightning split the dark cloudy sky. The storm had arrived.

X X X

Kind of a fake-time-skip chapter. There was a lot of pointless information to cover in this chapter before we get back to the meat of the story. Training Kairi to be able to kill Vlad, training Sora, Kairi’s pregnancy progressing to five months, Sora’s reaction to the baby, Kairi’s fear, and Juune and Roxas. 

Questions, comments, concerns?

New speculations?

Confusion?

Baby?

REVIEWS!


	19. The Cave in the Black Cliffs

I don’t really have much to say. Just that I’m sooooo booooored! But at least it was nice out today. I went for a four mile walk with my dog. It was pathetic on Wednesday because it was 31 degrees out and everyone was saying ‘Oh, it’s so warm!’ What does that say about how cold it’s been?

X X X

Freya Trinity-Masterson’s cave was calling… calling. It was reaching out spindly spider-web thin arms to twine through his brain and pull him apart at the seams. Her voice was calling to him, going through is body like a cold blade. Beckoning, beckoning… The ocean was screaming.

…

It was strange being back in Vlad’s house, in his bed, in his arms. He had quickly put her back into his bed, pulling the covers up over her, and acting as if she had never clubbed him in the head with a croquet mallet. He catered to her every whim and need like a servant, but even still Kairi every thought of him was dark and sour, afraid and disgusted. Then, night fell and he came to lie with her in what had once been their marriage bed. Thankfully, he did not try to have sex with her. He just lay beside her with his hands on her swollen stomach, breathing heavily into her hair. 

Kairi found herself missing Sora. Since the first night in the church when he had asked to sleep with her, he had slept with her. She missed his warmth, his light soft breathing, the feel of his hands on her belly. She even found herself missing the sounds of terror he made in the night, his nightmares. But, most of all, she missed his glowing cerulean eyes.  
Carefully, she freed herself form Vlad’s arms and took the knife out of her satchel. It gleamed in the moonlight streaming in through the window like a shard of silver ice. Kairi turned back and looked at Vlad’s sleeping form lying in bed. He looked innocent in sleep like a small child. 

Could she kill him in cold blood? Even knowing all the evil he had done? 

Kairi went to the window and looked out. She could see the black cliffs glowing in the moonlight like the edge of her knife. Standing at the edge was a small assembly of people—Star wearing a russet-colored Chinese dress, Rose-Red with her dark hair gleaming like polished ebony, and Namine in a stunning white silk gown. Kairi opened the window, inhaled the cool night air, and when she looked at the cliffs again, they were empty of ghosts. 

Kairi weighed the knife in her hand, but slipped it beneath the mattress. Then, she pulled back the covers and was about to slide into bed when there was a small tap on the window. She whirled around, expecting to see Star or Rose-Red or Namine or some other poor ghost who had died on the cliffs over the years, but there was nothing outside in the darkness. Silently, Kairi stared at the window, wondering if the sound would come again. Sure enough, it did—a small pebble bouncing off the glass.

She put both hands on the sill and leaned out. Standing on the grass, looking nervous and pale in the moonlight, was Sora. He gave her a small quavering smile, those cerulean eyes glowing, when she called down to him. 

“What are you doing here?” Kairi whispered as loud as she dared. She was suddenly afraid that Vlad would wake up, discover Sora, and hurt him again. 

He didn’t say anything, just dropped the stones he was holding and put his hands to his throat. Kairi understood him as only she could. 

“No, Sora, I… I don’t know if I can,” she whispered. 

Those cerulean eyes of his gleamed in the moonlight. Then, as if someone had called his name, he turned and looked at the cliffs. 

“Sora.”

He turned again to face her, looking up with a faint smile on his lips as if he had seen something wonderful on the cliffs. Maybe he had seen Namine in her flowing white gown. 

“I don’t know if I can kill him…”

Sora’s face fell, but he appeared to be trying to hide it. Had he known? Had he feared she wouldn’t be able to do it? Is that why he had followed her? Kairi would never know. As if the shadows had come and greedily swallowed him up, Sora turned and was gone into the night. 

Kairi got back into bed, but could not sleep. 

Not that it mattered, Vlad didn’t allow her to get out of bed the next day. In her condition, he said and he said it like she had a precious disease that he wanted to keep all to himself. In her condition… Kairi began to hate the child growing within her, but every time those thoughts came, she thought of Sora resting his face happily on her swollen stomach and the terrible thoughts went away. What felt like weeks passed in this fashion, but it hadn’t been anymore than six days. 

On the seventh day, Kairi made her move.

Both Vlad and Sora were waiting for her.

…

The morning dawned like the flip of a coin. The sky was ash-grey, the ocean was as smooth as glass, the wind was soft and light, and the sun was a burning orb on the edge of the horizon. It looked as if it could go either way—a great storm or a calm beautiful morning. 

Kairi woke feeling the same way. If she was going to kill Vlad, it would have to be today. While he was still sleeping, she fished the knife out from beneath the mattress, walked to the side of his bed, and stood looking down at him with the dagger clutched in her hand. Then, like the traitorous murderous harpy she was, she lifted the gleaming steel and plunged it down at the sleeping figure. 

As if he had been just waiting for this moment, his eyes shot open and his hand caught her wrist. His body was ice-cold and stiff and his hand around her slender arm felt like an old cold claw. “Planning to kill me, my sweet wife?” he snarled, so close to her face that she could smell his breath. Why did it remind her of the ocean, of rotting fish and wet sand? “Planning to stab your dagger into me?” Then, he threw her over him on the mattress, practically yanking her shoulder from the socket. 

The dagger clattered on the hardwood and Kairi let out a scream that split the morning.

Maybe, maybe if someone would help her!

“Go ahead, keep screaming. This house is empty! With Franny dead and out of my way, all the other servants ran away. They knew that if I’d kill her, no one else was even close to safe. This house it empty!” Vlad shouted into her face. He slapped her once, twice, three times, like he used to his Sora. 

Kairi struggling, feeling the baby moving in her stomach. “What about the child?” she screamed. Vlad seemed to care so much for the baby. Maybe she could use that to stop him…

Sure enough, he stopped hitting her face and lowered his hand to her swollen belly. “Yes… the child… Are you happy, Freya?”

Freya?! Kairi’s heart began to pound, to race. Her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth like glue. 

Vlad seemed not to hear the small animal sounds escaping her. He was stroking her stomach and Kairi could feel the baby responding to him, pressing against the lining of her womb as if to reach through her flesh and touch Vlad. Terrified, Kairi got her foot into Vlad’s crotch, was disturbed to find him rock-hard, and kicked him as hard as she could. He let out a grunt and dug his fingers into her wrist even harder. 

“Would you like to place that way, bitch?” He slapped her face again and Kairi tasted blood. “Why is it I give my wives everything they could ever want and they still betray me?”

“You are evil!” Kairi shouted. 

Vlad grinned. “You used to love me, bitch.” He stroked her stomach. “Our union is right here. Freya’s child is right here. I’ll keep you alive until the baby is born. Then, I will so enjoy throwing your worthless body over the black cliffs and into the sea!”

Kairi let out another scream. 

What should she do? What could she do? She needed help! She needed Juune! She needed Roxas! She needed… 

“Sora!”

But Sora did not come. Instead, the sound of his beautiful feminine name startled Vlad and for a moment, his grip on Kairi loosened. In those precious seconds, Kairi tore away from him, grabbed her dagger from the floor where it had fallen, and ran from the house. She exploded out the front door, stumbled down the steps, and looked back to see Vlad right on her heels. Another scream escaped her, but then… she saw him.

Sora was standing at the edge of the cliffs. His eyes felt like a physical touch, pushing strength and courage into her body. She ran to him, barely breathing, and Sora caught her up in his arms. His body was cold and she could feel him shivering. Why? Why was he shaking? He hadn’t been shaking like this since she had hit Vlad with the croquet mallet.

“Sora?” she whispered. He was holding her so tightly. 

She sensed Vlad’s approach, his pounding footsteps. She felt his hands on Sora’s arms trying to tear him away from her, but Sora was holding on so tightly. Then, almost effortlessly, Sora pulled away from Vlad and Kairi felt the sickening sensation of falling in the pit of her stomach. 

Then, she felt the cold breath of the sea on her face and squeezed her eyes shut. This was the end. The black cliffs had claimed two more victims. Instead, the ocean reached up and the cold water seemed to envelope them. But only for that moment, because as soon as they hit the water, Sora was torn away from her and Kairi was alone in the dark sea. Stone bit into her back, drawing blood. She could find the surface. Her lungs were about to burst. 

She was going to die.

Then, through the water, a beautiful woman came up to her as effortlessly as if she was walking and the ocean was not tearing them in every which direction. She had beautiful silken black tresses, big beautiful cerulean blue eyes that had never been innocent, a heart-shaped face, and was wearing a gown of rose-colored silk. Without a doubt, this was Sora’s mother, Rose-Red, the prostitute. She reached out long bony fingers and touched Kairi’s face. Air rushed into Kairi’s lungs and for one moment, she heard Rose-Red’s voice in her head, “Hello Kairi.” Then, coughing and sputtering, she found herself thrown onto solid ground. 

Gasping for breath, Kairi was looking out of the mouth of the cave as a second wave reared up and Sora was deposited at her side. For a moment, trapped in the water, Kairi saw Namine’s smiling white face and saw her give a slight wave of her hand. Then, the girl in white was gone. 

Sora coughed, spitting up water, and whirled to shout, “No! Don’t go!” 

But Namine was already gone.

“Where are we?” Kairi whispered.

Sora leaned forward and looked out of the mouth of the black cave. Then, he trembled as if about to cry, pulled himself together, and turned to face Kairi even though he had no answer for her. Not that she needed an answer anyway. They were in a cave, plain and simple, that had been carved into the black cliffs by some unnatural force. There was a strange light coming from deep inside the cave. Wordlessly, Sora got to his feet and helped Kairi up. They couldn’t go out the way they had come. They would be dashed to pieces on the rocks, with or without spiritual aid. They could only go forward.

…

Not only had Sora and Kairi survived the fall, but they were in her cave. They were in her cave! Freya was tearing his mind apart with her banshee shrieks. Get them! Her voice shrieked, cutting deep into his mind, tearing in like shining claws of blood. Get them! Get them out!

Vlad was on his knees, clutching his aching head, trying to make her terrible beautiful voice stop. Finally, when is did, he too plunged over the edge of the black cliffs. The water was like hitting stone and the rocks tore him to pieces, but still Freya called him… called him even from the next world. Namine and Rose-Red reared up in their water prison at the mouth of the cave, trying to bar his path, but Vlad pushed through the dead girls. 

Nothing would stop him.

Freya was calling.

…

Sora was holding Kairi’s hand again. It felt like an eternity since he had been beside her and she was so happy to have him with her now. She stumbled on the rough uneven floor of the cave and he clutched her to his side, guardian and protector. She held him tightly, still feeling the weight of her dagger in her hand.

Finally, they reached the end of the long tunnel, but it was not a way out. The cave at the end of the tunnel was fairly large with the high domed ceiling and a smooth floor. Stalactites hung down like spears and stalagmites pushed up like great teeth. It felt as if they were in the mouth of some great creature, but centered in the middle of the cave was a small wooden shrine with its little doors tightly closed and what looked like a child’s skeleton nailed to the stone wall above it with big stakes.

Kairi wanted to cry out, to scream, but Sora was curiously untroubled by either the shrine or the skeleton. Wordlessly, he let go of Kairi and went to the skeleton nailed to the wall. With deft fingers, he wrest out the stakes and gently eased the little body down from the wall, cradling its moldering body in his arms. Then, he stood up and held out a small golden necklace to Kairi. It was a locket that read simply Nina on the back. This was Freya’s missing child from all those years ago. 

Kairi reached out to the shrine with trembling hands and carefully pulled open the little doors. On a pillow of rotting wet red velvet lay a head—eyes closed as if in sleep, long golden tresses tumbling down, lips slightly parted as if still drawing in breath. There was no body, but the head was not decomposing in any way. The head could have been plucked off only moment before their arrival, but it hadn’t been. This head had been down here for as long as Nina’s little skeleton. This was Freya’s head. It had to be. Kairi had no sooner some to that conclusion when those eyes slide open to reveal terrible all-seeing green orbs and that mouth opened in a hideous snarl.

“Destroy them!” Freya shouted. 

Then, Vlad appeared in the tunnel behind them. His body was broken to pieces—arms limp and cracked at odd angles, legs twisted, face covered in blood, one eyes swollen shut, and broken teeth stuck in his lips. He should have been dead. Like them, he appeared to have plunged over the black cliffs after them, but unlike them no one had been there to catch and help him like they had. 

A scream escaped Kairi, shrill with terror, and she fell over backwards, cracking her head on the cold stone floor. Sora plowed into Vlad without thinking and they both crashed to the ground. Kairi heard Vlad’s bones breaking, shattering even more. Sora’s superior hand-to-hand combat quickly overpowered Vlad’s older and now-shattered body. 

“Kairi!” Sora said insistently. His voice sounded desperate and Kairi immediately understood him. The knife had skittered away when Kairi had fallen and she now scrambled after it. Her fingers had just closed over the hilt when Freya’s voice split through the entire cave like a physical wound.

“Destroy them!”

As if given new life, Vlad reared up and shoved Sora back. The smaller boy spilled across the floor, flesh filleting off of his arms and knees. Vlad threw himself at Sora again, got his hands around the boys’ thin throat, and squeezed. Sora looked terrified and small, like he had when he was pinned beneath Vlad in the blue silk dress, but this time Kairi didn’t have a croquet mallet. 

She only had a knife.

Her screaming was matched only by Freya as Kairi plunged the knife into Vlad’s back and shoulders over and over again, but nothing stopped him. He continued to strangle Sora and Sora’s fingers were growing weaker and weaker. Sobbing, Kairi hacked at the side of Vlad’s neck and hot blood poured across Sora’s face and chest, but still the older man did not stop. 

“Freya,” Sora gasped out.

Kairi whirled, lifted the knife again, and plunged it down Freya’s vulnerable face. Screaming, hands came out of nowhere and pressed to Freya’s split flesh. Behind her, Vlad collapsed. As she had thought, he was already dead, simply reanimated by whatever Freya was. But now, they had bigger problems than the living-now-dead Masterson heir because Freya’s body was coming back. 

Freya’s body appeared as if it was being poured into her from a great pitcher. The hands pressed to her bleeding face slowly became arms and then naked shoulders. Her breasts were full with pert rosy nipples and hung in midair before a narrow white chest appeared beneath them. Flesh poured down an hourglass waist, over smooth sharp hips, and down legs that went on for miles. Finally, feet at the ends of those long slender beautiful legs. Then, long black claws sprouted from her fingertips and toes. She lowered her hands from her beautiful face which was still bisected by a bloody slash. Her cat-like gleaming green eyes glared right through Kairi and her cruel mouth quirked.

X X X

A ha! Cliffhanger! No review or else I will drag my ass writing the next chapter and I’m sure you all want to know what happens next. Mwuahahaha!

Questions, comments, concerns?

New speculations?

Confusion?

Freya?

REVIEWS!


	20. Freya

Alright, since everyone keeps asking me if Kairi wrapping her stomach would hurt-the-baby-slash-kill-the-baby-slash-other-badness, let me just clear this up… Someone who died 200 years ago just came back to life and controlled a dead man to make him attack Sora. Let’s just say, the baby is *whisper, whisper, secret, secret* and therefore not hurt. So, hold your horses, the reasoning is coming… most likely this chapter, maybe next chapter, maybe later.

This came out to be kind of a short chapter, which is weird with this being such an important chapter and all.

X X X

“No one has ever cut this face,” Freya snarled at Kairi. “You will pay for this, you little bitch.” She took a step towards her and before Kairi could even lift her hands to protect her face from Freya’s slashing black claws, Sora was between them. Surprisingly, Freya shrank back as if the mere sight of him burned her. “What is this? A complete joining of the lines, of all three?”

Kairi touched Sora’s back, clutched his shirt in her fingers. “What do you mean by that?” Kairi whispered, but Freya ignored her. Those green eyes of her were only for Sora, staring at him as she would love to pounce on him and tear the flesh from his bones with her teeth. 

But thankfully, Sora was just as confused and curious as Kairi was and Freya was strangely inclined to answer him. “What?” he whispered, shock in his voice. 

Freya sashayed, naked, to Nina’s little skeleton and gazed down at it almost regretfully. “My sweet deplorable sisters—Star and Evangeline—are guardian goddesses of the monster, Freya. Oh, the things I did to try and escape them, to get my freedom,” she said and turned back to face Sora. She sauntered up to him, reached out those clawed hands, and touched his shoulders. Something akin to a bolt of lightning split her hands from his shoulder. The cave smelled of burned flesh and Freya hissed. 

Sora wasted no time in playing the game Freya wanted. He took the knife from Kairi’s hands and brandished it at Freya. “You,” he demanded, “tell me everything.”

Freya put her burned black hands to her breasts, cradling them. Then, as if bent to his will, she began to speak. “It was pure dumb luck that gave the Trinity woman triplets and the goddesses were due for reincarnation. There are many goddess trios in this world. They feed off of each other, protect each other, and keep each other in check. Star, Freya, and Evangeline are triple goddesses. Star is the huntress on earth, Freya is the ruler of the underworld, and Evangeline rules the moon and heavens.” 

Sora’s eyes were drilling into her, so very blue—Evangeline’s eyes. 

“The creature Freya, the underworld goddess, can only be stopped by one of her sisters.” Freya’s tongue snaked out, tantalizing and snake-like, and she tried to be cleverly quiet.

But Sora still wasn’t playing. “Tell everything!” he shouted. 

She looked startled and her mouth dropped into a straight line. She bit her mouth, drawing blood. “Freya made men fall in love with her, but killed and ate them. For her punishment, the trio was banished to human lives by the Great Ruler, but each was left with their powers. Their blood now runs in human veins, in the families Masterson, Kisaragi, and Romanov through marriage and children. These people are the embodiment of the powers of the three goddesses passed down, but not diluted over time. 

“The Kisaragis—Star, vigor and prowess and grace. 

“The Mastersons—Freya, death and war and control. 

“The Romanovs—Evangeline, beauty and love and fertility.”

Freya chewed her mouth more, touching her body with those black claws. “But, where these lines join—all three together—someone like you is created. You cannot be killed by me. You are embodied with all three bloodlines, the power of all three goddesses.”

“All three?” he whispered. “But my mother…”

“She was a common street whore! No one knew who she was, but I will tell you, little morsel,” Freya grinned mischievously. “She was Diana Kisaragi long before she was Rose-Red the slut! She ran away from her family because they were going to make her marry one of the Masterson boys. How funny that she wound up in the arms of Dirk Masterson even though she ran. She gave birth to you, a merging of the three bloodlines by some stroke of dumb luck. You and that imbecile who rides around so close but not close enough in his little boat are embodiments of the three of us!” 

Kairi’s heart began to pound. 

Roxas was thinking that something happened when two of the bloodlines joined, but he didn’t know how close he had been to the truth. All three families had to join to neutralize Freya’s evil. Both Roxas and Sora possessed a mixture of the bloodlines. It began when Anastasia Romanov married Dimitri Masterson and bore him two sons. Each of these sons then married a girl from the Kisaragi family—Yuffie and Rose-Red. Then, those unions produced Sora and Roxas, a merging of all three. 

But, now that she knew all that, how exactly did it help them?

“But, I have always wanted my freedom from the chains of my family. I was so close, too. I played the hurt woman with her daughter mysteriously gone and thought I had everyone fooled, even my sisters who were looking for my treachery. As soon as I could, I sent assassins to kill my sisters, but didn’t take into account that Star was such a warrior or that Evangeline was nine months pregnant. If I could just snuff out even one line of my sister’s bloodlines, I could be free because they would never have been able to kill me alone! 

“But, Evangeline’s child lived and Star came riding in to cut my head from my shoulders. Enraged as she was, even when I had cut her to pieces, she didn’t even feel it. She managed to cut my head from my shoulders. She managed to win! Then, she leaped over the black cliffs with my head. Since I was unable to kill her and she killed herself, the Great Ruler took pity and sent the Kisaragis the child she had had years ago when we were all young, a fling with some hunter—Polaris.

“Again, the Great Ruler saw fit to punished me. He sent my head to this wretched cave where I had strung up my daughter’s body and left me to rot, but from here I was able to torment and control the Mastersons as they carried on my hateful blood for centuries. And now, he has apparently seen fit to punish me again by sending me the one person who can destroy me.” Freya cut her radioactive-green eyes to Sora and licked the blood off her mouth. Then, she spread her arms. “Go ahead, plunge your dagger into my breast! Kill me, if you can!”

Sora was more than prepared to kill her and that surprised Freya. She leaped backwards from him, toppling over the little shrine where her head used to be. The wood shattered on the floor, splinters flying everywhere. Then, she played dirty. With a cruel grin, she waved her hands around her naked body. Smoothly, a blue silk dress enveloped her, her golden tresses turned brown, and her body turned into that of a young man. She was Sora wearing that terrible blue silk dress.

Sora halted in his tracks as if nailed to the floor. He turned pale, color draining from his face.

Freya put her hands to her face and began to cry. “Please, please, don’t hurt me. I don’t know what I am.”

Crumpled on the floor behind them, Vlad’s body rose to life again. “You miserable wretch!” he shouted. 

Sora jolted as if struck, whirling back and forth between the two of them as if he couldn’t decide which was more terrible. 

“Touch yourself. Fucking touch yourself! Tell me what you feel!”

Sobbing, Freya lifted the blue silk dress and touched her small boyhood. “Please, I don’t know what little boys feel like! I don’t know what little girls feel like! I don’t know what I am!”   
Kairi could see the cruelty gleaming in her green eyes. She may have changed everything else about herself, but she hadn’t been able to change the color of her eyes. 

Sora looked panicked, completely unable to think anymore. Where he had been strong before, Freya had made him into folded wet paper.

“Sora! Sora, stop listening to her!” Kairi shouted, fisting her hands in her soaking wet gown. “It’s all over! Vlad is dead! And even if he wasn’t, I saved you form him! I hit him with a croquet mallet! You’re safe now! She’s a liar! Please, Sora, don’t listen to her!”

Freya whirled on Kairi, Sora’s form melting from her body. She was the beautiful naked blonde goddess again, those black clawed raised to slit Kairi’s throat. “You bitch!”

Kairi squeezed her eyes shut. Was she going to die?

Her voice had pulled Sora back from the edge of darkness, from the things he had gone through at Vlad’s hands. Wordlessly, silent as a falcon coming in for its kill ad just as fast, he plunged the knife into Freya’s beautiful body and split her open from shoulder to hip. 

Freya let out a terrible scream, those clawed hands of hers clutching at the gaping wound even as her blood poured out of her. “How could this happen? I control men! I had Vlad destroy you from the inside out, torture you, nearly kill you! How could you come back? How could you still be this strong?!”

Sora let the knife slide from his fingers and whispered, “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.” Then, he looked at Kairi who was just opening her eyes. He reached out and held her hand and didn’t say anything more. They stood side by side and watched Freya die. Behind them, Vlad fell dead and silent again. 

Freya’s green eyes looked up and burned right into Kairi. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve killed me,” she snarled. “My new son, the new me, is right there inside you!”

Kairi hands flew to her swollen stomach and her heart began to pound. Freya started laughing a horrible cackle that died out slowly as she did. 

Then, the only sound was the distant sound of the ocean. Sora wrapped his arm around Kairi’s shoulders and led her back down the tunnel. The ocean outside was as smooth as glass and the sun had broken through the clouds. Sora jumped into the ocean, but Kairi saw no dead women rise to meet him. He didn’t need their help now. The ocean was calm. Kairi jumped in after him and they swam to the private beach together. Sora helped her onto the sand and they lay there together for a long time.

“We don’t have to tell the sheriff,” Kairi whispered. “No one will ever find him in that cave. They never found Nina.”

Sora didn’t say anything, just rolled over and gently laid his hands on her stomach. He closed his eyes. 

Freya’s terrible voice came back to her, echoing cruelly in her ears. _‘It doesn’t matter if you’ve killed me. My new son, the new me, is right there inside you!_ Kairi put her hands to her stomach and felt the baby touching her through her flesh, as if it knew what she was thinking, as if it knew her fear.

X X X

Questions, comments, concerns, other?

Confusion should be over now. I think I explained everything. But if you’re still confused, feel free it message or review me.

But the story… not even close! Well, maybe kind close… Oh, I don’t know! I have no idea. You all know how it is with me trying to end my stories. They never go exactly the way I planned and this one is already waaaaay out of my control. I mean really, we have goddesses and eternal punishments and dead people coming back to life. (Which isn’t so weird since Freya is the goddess of death and all, but still…) THIS IS not WHAT I HAD PLANNED! This story completely got away from me! *runs away shouting, “Come back plot! Come back to me! You’re my plot! Come back!”*

REVIEWS!


	21. Aftershock

ATTENTION! 

I’m thinking this story may actually break tradition. Sora and Kairi’s relationship didn’t develop quite the way I had imagined and I think it would kind of ruin it I forced them together at the end (which is coming pretty soon). 

Sora’s personality is so child-like that I just can’t see him getting together with Kairi. I’m actually thinking the next chapter might be a time skip and also the last one!!!!!!! Reviews may also influence me. It depends on how badly you all want it. I’ll think about it some more before I make my final decision, though. 

Questions, comments, concerns?

So, REVIEW, review for your lives!

X X X

When they finally staggered, wet and cold, over the crest of the trail leading up from the private beach, Kairi suggested they go into the mansion, find some dry clothes, and get dressed before they left for the Romanov Tavern. Sora, on the other hand, silently gripped her fingers tightly and prevented her from entering the dark house. 

“What is it?” she asked him. 

Wordlessly, he released her cold hand, gripped her shoulders, and made her stand at the base of the stairs leading up to the front door. Then, he disappeared inside as if swallowed up by the darkness and came back out with a container of gasoline and a small packet of matches. 

Kairi grabbed his arm, digging her cold fingers into him, as he screwed off the cap. “What are you doing?” she demanded.

“Burning this house to the ground,” he said plainly and shook her off. 

Wordlessly, he dumped the gasoline all around the house, circling it with Kairi making words of protest on his heels. Then, he set down the container, struck a match, and set the house ablaze. With a whuf of ignition, the black house went up in flames so quickly that he must have poured gasoline all over the floors inside as well. The blaze dried out their clothes and warmed Kairi to the core as they stood there and watched it burn. Then, as plumes of black smoke billowed into the sky, Sora took her hand again and led her silently to the stables. He tacked two of the horses, helped her mount up, opened the gate to let the remaining two run free, and then mounted up himself. Together they rode away from the Masterson estate, leaving behind all the darkness except what lurked inside.

…

They rode in comfortable silence, side by side on the deserted rode, until dusk. Sora was unbelievably patient even though Kairi had to laboriously dismount and run off to pee every few hours. But it was finally time to stop and make camp for the night. Sora started a fire with what was left of the matches and sat warming his hands around the flames for a long time. Then, without a word, he went of quietly into the forest and returned a while later with a rabbit that he skinned with some difficulty and then roasted over the flames. The smell of cooking meat made Kairi’s stomach grumble loudly. Sora sat beside her, rolling the rabbit as it roasted on the spit. Then, they ate in silence together. 

As the shadows crept in, darting in tempo of the flickering flames, exhaustion and cold slipped into Kairi’s bone. She pressed against Sora’s side, enjoying the heat of his body. Wordlessly, he wrapped his arms around her and, for the first time, Kairi allowed herself to respond to him where she never had before for fear of him reacting badly. She put her arms around his waist, feeling the thinness and strength of him. He didn’t push her away, but he did inhale sharply. 

“I’m not going to hurt you. You know that right?” Kairi whispered to him.

The tension melted from him and he made a small content sound deep in his chest, like a kitten purring. “I know,” he murmured and rested his cheek on the crown of her head. “But, it’s been so long since someone hasn’t hurt me…”

“Since Namine died?” Kairi asked him. 

He nodded. “I’m used to the pain, but you are… so strange to me.”

“Strange?” 

“Yes. To Namine, I was a child and she cared for me because she liked children, but now… I am not a child anymore, so why would you care for me?”

A child, Kairi thought. Sora was fourteen, two years younger than even her. Hell, when he was just a baby, his mother had jumped over the cliffs with him in her arms. When Namine was still alive, he had been eight. When she died, he had been ten. Who knew how long Vlad had even been tormenting him with the blue silk dress and his beautiful feminine name. In his short life, he had been through so much. She wondered if Sora had ever felt like a child, innocent and small and cared for. A child…

Gingerly, she cupped Sora’s face in her warm hands. His eyes slid closed, but Kairi couldn’t be sure if it was out of fear or pleasure. She stroked his cheeks, his lids, his mouth, the scar at the corner of his jaw. His skin was so soft, like living velvet, and his chocolate tresses were tumbling down over her fingers. She slid her hands through the cool silk of his hair. Suddenly, he pulled away. 

“I can’t,” he whispered. “I keep thinking of…” he shook his head.

Kairi lowered her hands, putting them in her lap. “I understand.”

They sat in silence, watching the fire, for a long time. Then, Kairi lay down on the hard earth, resting her head on her folded hands. While she was laying there, eyes closed tightly, she felt Sora laid a heavy saddle blanket over her. Then, sparks leaped up into the night sky as he prodded the fire. Finally, Kairi dozed off. 

In the middle of the night, she felt warmth against her back and strong arms encircling her waist. She cracked open her eyes. The fire was burning low, nothing but hot embers, and the horses were asleep, snoring lightly and standing upright. Sora’s breath feathered against the back of her neck, so soft, so light. Kairi put her hands over his and closed her eyes. Warm and safe and comfortable even on the hard forest floor, she fell asleep quickly again. 

In the night, Sora’s nightmares woke them both. His face was streaked with tears. Gently, Kairi cupped his face and brushed his tears away with her thumbs. He put his hands over hers, closed his eyes, and did nothing but press her touch against his cheeks as if she would vanish if he did not hold her there. Then, like a baby, he suddenly fell asleep again. Kairi lay there, holding him tightly against her breasts. In her womb, the baby was moving. It felt as if it was tracing its fingers on her womb, spelling out words, but thankfully, she could not tell what it was saying if anything at all. In sleep, Sora put his hands over her swollen belly.

…

Kairi had never been so happy to see the Romanov Tavern in her life. Juune was on the veranda, shouting and swinging her club. Roxas was standing behind her, expertly ducking beneath the swing of her club as she chased away someone who had started a brawl and broken something. When he saw Sora and Kairi though, they distracted him and Juune caught him in the face with her club on the backswing. With a crash, he fell backwards, pressing white hands to his bleeding nose. Juune whirled around, shouting at him—“What the hell is your problem, Roxas? Get out of my way, you oafish buffoon!”—and didn’t see them until they had dismounted and come up behind her. 

“Hi Juune,” Kairi said. 

Juune jolted, whirling around wildly and still brandishing her club. She might have caught Kairi in the face as well if it wasn’t for the fact that Sora grabbed her wrist and quickly helped her lower the weapon. “Damn it! Kairi and Sora, where do you get off sneaking up on me like that?! I could’ve knocked your heads in!” Juune shouted, waving her arms around, but smiling very broadly. Then, she noticed Kairi swollen belly and froze. “W-what is that?”

Protectively, Kairi put her hands over her stomach. “I’m pregnant,” she whispered. That gnawing fear was back, eating her alive. 

“That didn’t just pop up overnight. How far along are you?” Juune’s voice sounded accusatory. 

Kairi’s tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. 

“How far along?!” Juune shouted, demanded, and got up in her face like an angry viper. “Damn it, how far along?!”

“Juune,” Roxas murmured, practically drowned out by her raging voice. “Take it easy.”

“You shut up! Kairi,” she grabbed the younger girl and shook her viciously. “How fucking far along are you?”

“F-five months.”

Juune stepped back as if burned, wiping her hands on her leather dress. “It’s one of them. It’s a fucking Masterson child!”

“Juune, calm donw,” Roxas interjected again. “Please, take a breath.”

This time, she didn’t snap at him. She whirled, grabbed the dagger from the sheath at his side, and slashed wildly at Kairi. The point of the knife sliced through the middle of her dress and made a long shallow cut across her belly. Crying out, Kairi fell backwards over herself, tripping up in the hem of her gown. 

“Juune!”

There was a flurry of activity. Sora and Roxas were both all over Juune like white on rice, prying the knife from her hands and forcing her down. Together, they wrest Juune’s hands behind her back and Roxas sat on her, pinning her effectively. He turned to look at Sora, blue eyes meeting blue. Maybe something passed between them, maybe nothing did, but either way…

“Go. I’ll keep her here for as long as I can,” Roxas said.

Sora nodded. Then, he took Kairi’s hands, pulled her to her feet, and helped her back into the saddle. Kairi was already at the gate, waiting nervously and impatiently for Sora. He paused at the gate to look back at Roxas, to see the older man nod, and then he took off after Kairi down the dusty road. In the distance, they could hear Juune shrieking and yelling. Her screams seemed to follow them down the road like loosed arrows. 

…

Kairi was riding fast, so fast that Sora had to kick Tiger Lily several times to get her to match Polly’s pace. Kairi was slouched low in the saddle, one arm wrapped tightly around her belly, the other lashing the reins. Her face was set with grim determination and her ruby tresses whipped in the wind like stinging fire. Finally, Sora pulled up even with Kairi, reached over, and caught the reins. It hurt him to do this, but he yanked hard. Polly let out a pained sound, but stopped so suddenly that Kairi was almost thrown from the saddle. Beside her, Sora halted just as abruptly, holding on desperately. 

“Let me go, Sora! Just let me go!” Kairi’s face was streaked with tears and she lashed at him blindly with weak little fists. “They’re going to kill my baby! Just let me go! Let me go! I’ll die before I let them kill my baby!”

He jerked back as if struck. “You’d die?” he whispered. 

“Yes! I will plunge into the sea before I let them kill my child!”

Kairi looked at him, not recognizing the fear in his face, and clutched her stomach with both hands, sobbing desperately. Everyone he had ever loved had died, had thrown themselves into the cold wine-dark sea—Namine and his mother and now Kairi. Trembling, he reached out to her and she remembered his fingers—all twisted, all broken, all bandaged. She caught his hands, so healed and perfect and fragile-slender, and held them tightly. 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But… I can’t let them kill my baby. I’ll wait for the day she’s born and if she is evil, if she’s like Freya, I swear I’ll kill her myself. But… I have to give her that chance. I just have to.”

Sora drew her hands to his face, rubbing the back of her knuckles against his cheeks. “Will you send me back?” he murmured.

“Send you back?”

“Or can I come with you?”

Kairi smiled a quavering little smile and looked into those beautiful cerulean blue eyes. “Even if I don’t know where I’m going?”

“I don’t want anyone else to die,” he whispered. “Not even the baby…” Gently, he reached out and touched the small wound on her stomach. 

Kairi winced, but did not push his hands away. “Okay,” she whispered. “Come with me.”

Sora looked up into her face and for a moment, she dreamed he would lean over and kiss her, but he did no such things. Instead, he sat up in his saddle and gently urged his horse forward again. For a while, Kairi watched his back as he rode. Then, she followed him, but she had no idea where they were going or where they even could go. Maybe some place where no one had heard of the Mastersons or the dark goddess Freya and her guardian sisters. Yeah, that sounded nice.

X X X

So, REVIEW, review for your lives! 


	22. What is Affection?

Dedicated to Joahikim! Thanks for pulling my plot out of the little hole it was in!

X X X

The little town where they chose to start life anew was far inland, far from the alluring crash of the wine-dark sea. Kairi had always loved the sea—its mysterious beauty, its glassy calm, its raging storms, the ebb and flow of the tides, the scent of the salt—but after everything that had happened, Sora hated it. He did not want to live by the sea and Kairi was more than happy to oblige him. After all, without him, she would be nothing. Since she was pregnant and now unmarried, without him, people would shun her like a leper. They had decided to pose as a couple to keep the scorn at bay. 

Fall was turning over all its new leaves of red and gold and orange. It looked like the fire that had consumed the darkness in the Masterson mansion. There had even been a small article in the paper about the blaze and Vladimir Masterson and his wife, Kairi, who had presumably died in the blaze. But even so Kairi had not written her mother. It pained her to let her mother go on believing she was dead, but she feared that Juune had stretched a spider’s web of intelligence across the roads and would come bearing down like the headless horseman to slaughter Kairi and the baby. So, she did not write her mother to tell her that she was alright or where she was staying. 

Swoop Down Valley was nestled in the bosom of two great mountains with a strong river running through its center like a road. The entire town was powered by the river, by waterwheels, which supplied electricity and powered water through the aqueducts. There was a covered bridge wide enough for two carriages to pass abreast connecting the halves of the town split by the river. All along the river were the towns small businesses—the barber, the baker, the candlestick maker, the blacksmith, the apothecary, the grocer, the shoemaker, the dress maker, the florist, and a few others. On the outskirts of the town were the farmers with their endless fields. Between the shops on the river and the farms at the edge lived all the inhabitants in a motley assortment of houses, cottages, shacks, and mansions. 

Sora and Kairi had found a neat little cottage that had needed some work for the perfect price. Within a month, Kairi had cleaned it spotless and planted roses around the door while Sora found a good job working with the bookbinder just around the corner. Sora had soft gentle hands perfect for easing worn books out of their tattered bindings and into fresh linen covers and a soft quiet way about him that the elderly man had only ever heard about in books. Not only that, but Sora enjoyed the quiet work talking with the elderly bookbinder and tending the dusty books. He was never without a faint smile anymore. 

Today, Sora arrived back at the cottage at the break of dusk—a little later than usual—with another book tucked under his arm. Inside, Kairi had started a fire in the hearth and was stirring the stew she had prepared for dinner. She was sitting in her favorite rocking chair, one arm wrapped around her six-months-pregnant belly. Sora came and knelt at her side, putting the book in her lap silently. 

“Another book?” Kairi asked him and traced her fingertips over the soft gold leaf. 

Sora nodded. He brought home a different book once a week for them to read together and then returned it to the bookbinder for another. 

“What’s this one about?”

He rolled his shoulders and waited patiently for Kairi to give him a taste of the stew. Sure enough, she picked out a hunk of potato, blew on it, and put it to his lips. She always knew what he wanted. They had that kind of relationship by now. 

“Is it good?”

He nodded, tucked the book under his arm, and helped Kairi to her feet. Gingerly, she ladled out two bowls of stew and handed them to Sora. Then, she waddled over to the roughhewn kitchen table and eased herself down in a chair with heavy padding to support her back. They ate in silence. After dinner, Sora washed the dishes and heaved the cauldron off the fire. Then, he helped her into their bed and lay down beside her like an expectant child, waiting for her to read to him. 

Smiling, Kairi propped the book up on her belly and allowed Sora to rest his face there, so close to the book that she had trouble turning the pages without hitting his nose. Then, she began to read to him, filling the little cottage with the sound of her voice. After a while, he fell asleep, breathing lightly. Kairi put a ribbon in the book to mark their page and laid the novel aside. 

Snuggling down deeper in the blankets, she cradled Sora against her side. She stroked his face, his hair, his soft skin. Never in a million years would she have seen herself here in this place—unmarried, posing with Sora as her husband, pregnant with Vlad’s child, lying in bed comfortably, and spending time reading. 

She dipped her head and placed a small kiss on the corner of Sora’s mouth, something she never dared to do while he was awake. Sometimes, she felt like touching him was off limits, as if he would scream if she dared touch him. Other times, he was so close that it felt as if he wanted to share her skin and cared nothing for boundaries. His eyes fluttered open, beautiful cerulean blue, and met hers through what felt like endless space. 

He lifted himself up on his elbows and looked straight into her face as if scrutinizing her expression for underlying motives. “Why?” he whispered to her, voice so soft and timid, as if he feared her answer to such a strange question.

“Why what?” Kairi asked him.

“Why do you kiss me when you think I’m asleep?”

Her cheeks tinged pink. He wasn’t asleep? How many times had he been awake when she chanced kissing him? “I don’t know, Sora. I just… I want to show you some love. You deserve it,” she whispered and pushed his hair back from his eyes. 

“I deserve it?”

“Yeah… I mean, you’ve been through so much to start with. The things Vlad did to you, God, I think they would have destroyed anyone else, but you made it through and you’re so kind. If anyone deserves to be cared for and treasured, it’s you. I’ve never met someone like you. I just want you to feel some affection in your life.”

“You feel affection for me?” 

Kairi loved watching his face, love watching him speak. He said affection so slow and soft, as if tasting the word on his lips. She put one finger to his mouth and smiled. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Is affection like… love?”

Her heart skipped a few beats. “What do you mean, Sora?”

“What is affection?”

“It’s like love.”

He appeared perplexed. “But, what is love?”

Kairi didn’t know what to say to him. She could feel her mouth moving, but no words were coming out.

“What does it feel like?” he whispered. His eyes glowed, sparkled, as if his life depended on whether or not he could figure this out.

“It’s like… caring. You care so much for someone that you would do anything for them. It feels very warm and soft right here,” she ran her hand down his chest over his heart. His heart was racing, pounding as if to break free and explode out of his chest. “Your heart…”

He put his hand over hers, feeling what she felt. “What?”

“It’s… beating so fast.”

“It always beats like that when I’m with you.”

“Do you love me, Sora?”

Again, he looked unsure, confused even. “Is that was love is like? Your heart beating very fast?”

Kairi wet her lips. “No. Your heart can beat fast for a lot of reasons. Like when you’re afraid or if you’re working hard.”

“Then it means nothing.”

“That’s not true. It’s just… oh, Sora, I don’t know how to explain it. Love is just something you have to experience for yourself.”

“Can I?”

“Yes, of course.”

Kairi didn’t know what he was planning to do, but his hands touched her face as he must have so often felt her do to him when she thought he was asleep. He explored the planes of her face—touching everything as if he had never felt it before. Then, his lips—so soft, like living velvet—touched hers gingerly, softer than butterfly’s wings. He only kissed her for a moment, before quickly pulling away and looking into her face. When she didn’t strike him or do anything else cruel like he had been expecting, he timidly kissed her again, feeling her lips beneath his. 

Sora was so childlike sometimes. He had a sense of wonder and innocence about him, as if everything he did was new and pleasurable from listening to her read to tasting supper to looking out the window at the sky at night to feeling the baby move inside her. And now was no exception. His hands were like ghosts, touching her face and her shoulders and her hair, exploring everything about her. Then, with the same tentativeness he had shown kissing her for the first time, he touched her breasts. 

Kairi had never wanted someone the way she wanted him now. It took every ounce of will in her body not to wrap her arms around him and crush him to her. Instead, she clenched her fingers hard in his shirt and tried to focus on not sucking him in. She wanted to let him go at his own pace. 

“Can I see you?” he whispered.

“Yes, of course.”

Kairi helped him ease her out of her dress and then encouraged him to take off his own clothing. His hands were shaking so badly that he couldn’t unbutton his trousers. Kairi did it for him, relishing the soft porcelain-pale flesh that was revealed for her eyes. 

“You’re beautiful,” Kairi whispered. She wanted every inch of him. She wanted him in her mouth, in her hands, inside her. “Sora…” she moaned. 

“No, wait, please. I’m afraid,” he whispered. 

“Afraid?” she repeated.

He nodded and she saw everything reflected in his cerulean eyes. The times his father had raped him at night, the abuse he had suffered, the blue silk dress Vlad had tormented him with, when he had been forced to touch himself in front of Vlad, even being here now in the same bed with Kairi and no clothes between them. Nothing good had ever happened to him when his clothes were off. She could see why he was afraid, even if she didn’t fully understand it. After all, she had never hurt him. Why would he fear her? 

“Okay,” she whispered. “It’s okay.”

Wordlessly, he wrapped his arms around her and pressed again her side. She could feel all his naked flesh—so soft and warm and ridged with white scars in so many places. He lay his head down on her breasts and closed his eyes and fell asleep within minutes. 

Kairi lay there much longer, touching his back and his hips and his shoulders, feeling the strength coiled deep in his muscles. She imagined what it would be like to finally be with him, to make love to him. Then, she hugged him tightly and sighed heavily. In her womb, she could feel the baby tracing on the inside of her womb. Sometimes, it felt as if the child had little pricking claws and it made Kairi feel cold with the memory of Freya’s black claws. She ran her hand over her swollen stomach, touching Sora’s where it rested there as well, and finally fell asleep.

X X X

Haha! Faked you out! No sex in this chapter!

Questions, comments, concerns?


	23. The Bookbinder

Should I fake you out again?

X X X

Over the next few weeks, Kairi let Sora go at his own pace—as slow or as fast as he wanted. Sometimes, he did nothing at all, lying in bed fully clothed with his back to her, and she went nearly crazy with want for his touch. Other times, he stripped naked and lay beside her beneath the sheets and drove her up the wall with the feel of his soft bare skin against hers. Once, he had spent an entire evening exploring every inch of her body with his hands. Another night, he had tasted the skin of her throat, lapping at her pulse with his lips and tongue. Tonight had been one of the soft lying-beside-her-naked nights and she woke up with the feel of his bare flesh against her breasts. 

He kissed her when she opened her eyes, which was about the only thing he did without hesitation or nervousness. Tenderly, she kissed him back, pouring every ounce of comfort and love she had into him. She put her hand son his bare back, feeling the counters of his muscles beneath his soft skin and the fluid way he moved. She put her hands through the cool silk of his chocolate tresses, pulling him closer. 

“Kairi,” he whispered against her lips. 

“Yes?” She kissed his throat and his cheeks, breathless with her desire for him. 

“If you have love for me, can I be with you?”

Kairi pushed him back, looking into his face. “What do you mean?”

He looked nervous, those beautiful eyes of his downcast. She watched him warring with himself for a moment, eyes darting and teeth biting his soft wounded-looking mouth. “Nothing,” he said finally. “It’s silly,” he whispered and scrambled from the bed, snatching his trousers from the day before to his crotch but not before Kairi saw the stiffness of his arousal.

“Sora, wait!” If she hadn’t been pregnant, she would have had her hand son him before he had managed to get dressed, but she was pregnant and she only barely caught him at the door. “Please, wait, talk to me. You know I won’t ever hurt you, even when your clothes are off. What is it?”

He took the blanket from their bed and wrapped it around her nudity. “It’s nothing. Really. I should get to work,” he said and squeezed past her out the door. 

Kairi stood there, holding the blanket closed over her breasts and staring after him as he practically ran to the bookbinder’s shop around the corner. Then, with a sigh, she closed the door and lay back down in their bed, thinking of that expression on his face. What had he been trying to ask her?

…

Kairi didn’t know that Sora had taken the little leather satchel from beneath her bed in the Masterson Mansion before he set the entire place ablaze. Inside it, he had been pleased to find a picture of himself and Namine, Namine’s white diary, and the photograph of Namine and Vlad’s wedding in the cracked bronze frame. These things he had left safely hidden beneath the cushion of the bench at the bookbinding shop. 

Over the past two months, Sora had spent a lot of time talking to the old bookbinder—Mo Fitch. He told him everything, everything, and it felt so unbelievably good to just let everything out. A while ago, the old bookbinder had suggested Sora write down his tale, just in case the next people to encounter the Trinity Goddesses happened across it or… for his own peace of mind. Sora had decided on the latter of those reasons. 

Over the past weeks, he had dictated his story to Mo, watching patiently as the elderly gentleman’s smooth black calligraphy washed across the creamy pages of a blank book. In the center, Sora had bound Namine’s diary so that it was as much a part of his story as the words he spoke to Mo. He had also put in the two photographs, drawn a family tree and a timeline, and sketched a picture of the frightening dark goddess Freya. Today, Mo was waiting for the very last pages of Sora’s painful story. Within a few hours, the book was complete and Mo handed Sora the book bound neatly in soft pale blue silk. 

Sora sat, staring at the book in his lap, for what felt like an eternity. There it all was—all the darkness in his life laid out plainly in black-and-white words, all the tragedy he had been through in one small little tome lying in his lap wrapped in pale blue silk. Was it all really that small, that simple, just one little book?

“Thank you, Mo,” Sora murmured, “for this. It means a lot to know someone listened.”

Mo smiled, took off his glasses, and polished them on his lapel. “I just have one question.”

It was the least Sora could do. “Of course.”

“What happened to the pages in Namine’s diary? The pages where she confesses what Vlad did to you.”

“I tore them out and burned them.”

“Why?”

“I loved to read her diary after she was gone. It reminded me of her so much. I swore I could hear her voice when I read it, feel her arms around me like when she used to read to me. The tome even used to smell like her, not anymore though. I just couldn’t bear seeing those pages and being reminded of what Vlad had done to me. I hated to look at those words. I just wanted to feel Namine. I didn’t want to remember anything about what Vlad did to me so I ripped them out.”

Mo nodded. “I understand.”

“Do you?”

“Yes. If I were in your position, I can’t say I wouldn’t have done the same thing.”

Sora’s eyes widened and he clutched the tome to his chest. “Why?”

“Because who wants to be reminded of the bad things that had happened to them?” Mo asked him and smiled that all-knowing smile. “It’s alright, Sora.”

“How is it alright?” Sora whispered. “I never thought it would be alright.” 

Mo sat beside Sora on the bench. “Child, you’ve had three lifetimes worth of Hell. It can only go up from here for you.”

“What if it doesn’t?”

Mo gently took the boy’s shoulder in his aged hands. “Now, now, don’t think like that, Sora,” he chastised. “Don’t you want your life to be happy?”

“Yes, but it’s my life. Is it possible for me to be happy?”

Mo chucked him under the chin. “That’s completely up to you. From what you’ve told me, you’ve had your fair share of unhappiness and Ms Kairi seemed to be a beautifully kind woman. I’m sure she will not hurt you. I would say she truly loves you.”

Sora bit his lip. “But what about the baby—”

“Worry about the baby when it’s born,” Mo said. “You have no way of knowing until then.”

Sora stroked the cover of the tome in his lap with the tips of his long fingers. “I guess you’re right. Thank you for everything, Mo,” he murmured. 

“For everything?”

“For writing my story, for binding the book, for listening, for everything.”

Mo sat back, pushing his glasses up on his nose. “Listening to the stories of interesting strangers is one of life’s greatest blessings,” the elderly bookbinder said. “Just like reading a book you’ve never read before or enjoying a hot cup of tea on a night you can’t sleep.”

Sora smiled, his throat heavy with emotion. “I wish Franny was still alive. I think you would have liked her.”

Mo smiled. “She is alive. Right here,” he touched Sora’s chest and then the cover of the tome. “She’ll always be alive there.”

Then, they set about with the day’s work and by the end of the day, Sora had a stack of beautifully rebound books stacked up on his bench with their filthy ragged covers lying in the garbage. For some reason, he felt like one of those books. He felt as if he had sloughed off his ragged damaged exterior and was now nothing but clean beauty beneath.

X X X

Yes, I admit it. I’m dragging my ass. I want this to make it to twenty-five chapters because I like to end on either a zero or a five. So, you all get lots of end-tying fluff! Be happy! Happy, damn it! Rawr! 

Questions, comments, concerns?


	24. Consummation: Sora and Kairi

Have you all been teased and tormented enough?

I’m listening to The Little Mermaid’s “Kiss the Girl” while I write and I just have to say that Sebastian totally set the mood for this scene! (Doesn’t everyone know that they need to bring a singing crustacean along on a first date to set the mood?)

Oh, and since I'm talking about classic Disney movies, anyone who hasn’t seen “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” must go and watch it! You MUST! It is Disney’s most amazing and epic movie and will probably be banned in ten years with how offended everyone gets over everything. (I mean, Quasi is a hideous guy, Esmeralda has a priest who wants to fuck her, and Phoebus is white to Esmeralda’s brown sugar. It’ll be banned by some moron and I’ll have to become very war-like and protest to protect the world’s greatest movie!) So, come one everybody! 

Okay, now that that’s out of the way…

On with the show!

X X X

Dusk was just falling, painting the sky a bouquet of amazing colors. Cool night was descending on the world. Sora had left the tome he and Mo had made together at the bookbinding shop and came home alone in the darkness. The cottage with its pink roses blooming around the door had never looked so inviting with the chill seeping into Sora’s bare skin. The windows were shuttered, but he could see warm amber light peeking out of the slats and beneath the front door. Inside, Kairi was waiting up for him, sitting in her rocking chair wrapped in a thick patchwork quilt and reading. She looked up and smiled at him when he entered. 

“Hey, Sora. Good day at work?” Kairi asked him as she slipped the ribbon into her book. 

“Yes.”

Kairi had spent the entire day thinking of what he had said that morning. ‘If you have love for me, can I be with you?’ Since he wouldn’t tell her what he had meant, she saw only one logical choice to figure out what he had meant. Simple, she had to turn the tables on him. “Sora, can I ask you something?”

“Yes.”

Laboriously, Kairi stood from her rocking chair, sat down on the bed, and patted the space beside her. Sora came to sit with her, putting his white hands on his bent knees and looking nervous. Gingerly, she took his hands in her own and tried not to think of how his fingers had looked when she first met him—all broken, bandaged, and splinted. His hands felt cold and she rubbed them between her own. 

“Sora, do you care for me?”

He tried to pull his hands away from her. There were countless rose petals on the bed, spread across the sheets. Why were there rose petals on the bed? He wanted to ask her, but his voice was stuck in his chest like a small animal in a cage. 

“Sora, please.”

“Yes,” he confessed. “More than anyone. Without you, I’d be alone again. Now, please, let me go.”

But she did not. She allowed him to pull his hands from her, but cupped his face firmly with both hands. “If you care for me, can we be together?”

His heart skipped several beats, stuttering in his chest. He jerked away from her as if struck, practically falling off the bed. 

Kairi caught his hands, clutching them tightly. “Look at me,” she whispered.

His sky-colored eyes glowed in the dark, shadowed by his long dark lashes like twin fans feathered against his crème cheeks. 

Kairi touched his face, her fingers exploring the ridge of a scar at the curve of his jaw and the corner of his petal-pink mouth where his teeth had once gone through the soft flesh. “Sora, if you care for me, we can be together.”

“Be together?” His voice was like breath, so soft that she would have missed it had she not been staring at his mouth. 

“Yes. All you have to do is…” 

She didn’t need to finish her sentence because she felt his lips on her cheek, trembling as if full of trapped words and feeling that wanted to spill out of him like too many tears. He gently kissed her lips, trembling hands cupping her face and threading through her dark ruby tresses. Kairi put her arms around his back and pulled him close as if to absorb him into her. Then, the weight of her pregnancy toppled them and she lay on her back with him above her. His face was so close that his eyes were like twin cerulean blue moons hanging in a pale sky above her face, so beautiful. His hands had slipped from her hair, but she still had her arms around him with her palms flat on his strong back. Both his hands were braced on the bed, fingers full of rose petals. They were quiet, just close to each other lying on the bed intimately for the longest time. 

Then, wordlessly, he took a handful of petals and sprinkled them down on her like soft rain. “Why are there rose petals?” he whispered.

Kairi smiled. “Because I wanted your first time to be sweet,” she said to him.

He pulled back, eyes dark and concerned and full of some kind of accusation as if she only wanted to be with him because she thought he had been with no one else. “It is not my first time—”

She quickly put her fingers to his mouth. “Those don’t count! You didn’t want that and I want so badly for you to want this with me.”

The darkness left his eyes, but he still appeared confused. “So, those times do not count? How is that? I was… taken for the first time a very long time ago… by my father.”

“Have you ever been with a woman?” Kairi whispered, as if speaking to loud would make him leap into the dark night like a startled firefly. 

He shook his head. “Does it hurt to be with a woman?”

Kairi cupped his face tenderly. “No, but even if it did, you know I would never hurt you.”

He nodded slowly and put his hands over hers on his cheeks. “Kairi,” he whispered. “Can I be with you?”

“Yes,” she breathed. 

Then, there were practically no more words between them.

Kairi was wearing a simply robe fastened at her waist in preparation, but Sora was fully outfitted in his work clothes. He toed off his boots, stowing them neatly out of habit, and then allowed Kairi to pull him towards her by the lapels of his jacket which she quickly pushed from his narrow shoulders and discarded. Tenderly, she unfastened all the buttons of his shirt and let it fall open. His shirt was the same white as his skin. Gently, she put her lips to the hollow of his belly, up the small fair hair dotting his sternum, across his long collarbones, up his throat, and finally to his lips again. She kissed him hungrily, unable to believe just how badly she wanted this. 

She put her hands to the belt of his trousers and he hesitated, putting his hands over hers and begging at her with his eyes. She could tell he was afraid and kissed him gently again until he allowed her hands into the waist of his pants. His skin was as warm and soft as living velvet and as smooth as silk. She tenderly slipped his pants down his legs, wincing as his hands flew to cover himself as if ashamed but continued as if she hadn’t seen, and encouraged him to step out of them. Bare before her, as he had been before, he suddenly seemed so small and childlike, so fragile and afraid. She wanted to hold him to her breasts and stroke the cool of his hair, but Sora was persistent. 

It seemed that as badly as she wanted this, he wanted it more. 

He parted her robe with shaking hands and then remembered the knot. He couldn’t untie it though. His hands were trembling too wildly. Kairi held his shoulders and looked him straight in the face, asking him silently if he wanted to continue. He nodded slightly and kissed her gently. He had already explored her body a few times and knew what places to touch that made her wet and soft. He stroked her breasts, caught her nipples lightly between his fingertips, and rolled them between his fingers until they were hard pebbles. Then, he put his lips to them, suckling like a babe. Kairi slid his fingers though the cool of hair and pressed him close. 

Then, his warm slightly rough hands were between her thighs, touching that most secret of places. He never entered her, though, only stroked that soft bundle of nerves that made her writhe and moan for him. His mouth burned the same path down her body. The moment he first tasted her, he made a face, but his eyes were so soft and warm that Kairi just let him continue whatever he desired. He lapped at her gingerly, as if unsure of himself, and continued touching her body with the tips of his fingers. Shivers coursed through Kairi’s body.

“I need you,” she whimpered. 

Then, Sora did something strange. He lay face down on the bed, clutching the sheets and rose petals in white-knuckled fingers. Kairi eyes a scar at his lower back—a long jagged thing that looked almost like an arrow pointing down into the cleft of his ass. 

“What are you doing?”

He turned his face and stared up at her with tragic blue eyes. “You want me,” he whispered. “I give myself to you. I promise, I won’t scream.”

Kairi felt all the blood drain from her face and she gently touched him. He flinched, but then melted into her touch. She drew him into her arms, cradling him against her breasts for a long moment while he contentedly listened to her heartbeat. 

Then, she whispered, “What do you mean, Sora?”

He put a cool hand on her arm and guided her hand around his hip. In that moment, Kairi understood. Sora didn’t know how sex worked. He had only ever been raped by his father and tormented by Vlad. He thought sex involved her shoving something up his ass and naturally hurting him. 

“Oh, Sora,” she whispered. “It’s not like that. Can I show you?”

He trembled slightly, but nodded. 

Kairi struggled upright, off the bed, and then knelt at his feet. His member was scarred with small old wounds and Kairi had to shove away the image of Vlad about to plunge that needle into his intimate flesh. No wonder he was so afraid and inexperienced. Wordlessly, she caught his eyes and then opened her mouth to engulf him. She saw a flicker of fear pass over his face as she took him into her mouth, but it quickly faded when she lavished attention on him with her tongue. Sora made no move to try to guide her pace or push himself deeper into her mouth. He only remained completely at her mercy, hands tightened around the rose petals and bed sheets. 

Then, gently, she pulled away from him and lay back on the bed. She took his hips, guided him between her legs, and gently sheathed the length of him deep inside her. The shock on his face as her warm muscles clamped down on him was priceless. His lips pursed slightly and a small moan escaped him. 

“Move inside me. Do whatever feels good to you, Sora.”

He looked nervous, but closed his soft cerulean eyes and began to move inside her. His thrusts were smooth and fluid, so powerful that they set her teeth on edge. She could feel all his muscle contracting and flexing as he made love to her, filling and emptying her beautifully. 

Being with Sora was nothing like being with Vlad. 

Then, she felt him begin to twitch slightly with his release inside her as his seed poured into the core of her. His face appeared perplexed, some unknown emotion burning in his eyes. Then, he pulled out, face even more puzzled by the limpness of something that had been to hard only moments before. 

“Did you like that?” Kairi whispered. She lifted the hot sheets and slipped beneath them with him. 

“Yes,” he breathed into her hair. He ran his hands across the sheets, toying with the rose petals scattered there. “I liked that very much. Can we… do it again?”

Kairi smiled. “Of course, whenever you want, Sora.”

He nestled his face into her neck, breathing deep and light. After only a few moments, he was deeply asleep. Kairi snuggled against him, wrapping his arms around her body. She lay awake a while, listening to his breathing and his heartbeat. She didn’t want to sleep yet. She just wanted to feel him and the warmth coming off of his body, but before she could protest, sleep wrapped her tightly in its dark arms. Nothing woke her in the night, not even the feeling of the baby kicking.

X X X

Remember, everybody, Hunchback of Notre Dame! Go watch it!

Questions, comments, concerns?


	25. The Story Continues?

LAST CHAPTER! *gets out fishing pole and reels everyone back in* Phew! 

I think this is the fastest I’ve ever completed a story. 

So, classic author’s note at the end.

X X X

It was Kairi’s last month of pregnancy. 

She had taken to only lying in their bed, exhausted and heavy. Her belly had swollen to an unbelievable size. She couldn’t even see her feet anymore. Her emotions were like a runaway train, up and down and over and under. She often went from snapping at Sora, full out screaming and throwing what she could at him, to feeling terrible and crying at the sight of that pain on his face or of him scrambling like a kicked puppy to escape her wrath. 

After all, he had done nothing to hurt her. It was quite the opposite. Without him, she would be horny and lonely and most likely dead. 

Mo had given Sora this last month off so he could spend all his time with Kairi. Though sometimes she caught him looking longingly out the window which always led to a fresh rage. Once, she had almost thrown a book into the fire, singing the edges of the cover. Sora spent the rest of the afternoon rebinding the book silently at his bench by the window, silently and without complaint. 

Now, as dusk was falling, Sora came to sit beside her with a book in his lap. He pulled back the covers and slid in next to her, waiting for her to get comfortable with her head in his lap. Then, he opened the book and began to read. He had the smoothest, softest, sweetest voice she had ever heard when the fear was out of it. It was like molten chocolate, like silk, like the clearest blue sky. Kairi loved listening to his voice… and so did the baby. 

She felt her child begin to kick away inside her womb and glanced up at Sora happily, grinning from ear to ear. “Give me your hands. Here, feel!” 

She slipped his warm hands across her swollen abdomen and watched the play of emotions across his face as he felt the baby moving. Was that a touch of fear in his eyes, a hint of nervousness in his smile, a glint of uncertainty, a glimmer of something dark? But then his eyes were nothing but beautiful clear cerulean blue and he smiled at her. 

Kairi rested her head on his chest, listening to his heartbeat and the thrum of his voice deep in his chest as he read to her. 

Then, there was an unpleasant seizing pain in her abdomen, like a great rippling wave. She pressed her hands to her belly and tried to focus on Sora’s voice, on the words he was saying, but to no avail. She could feel the baby touching her insides as if tracing the words on the lining of her uterus. The pain came again, sharp and nothing like the Braxton Hicks Contractions she had been experiencing earlier in the week. She caught Sora’s hand and held it, focusing on the warmth and softness of his skin.

“Kairi, is something wrong?” Sora’s voice seemed to come to her from far away.

“Huh?”

“You… you’re hurting me,” he confessed. 

She forced open her eyes and, sure enough, his hand was bloody, crimson dripping down his wrist. She had dug her nails into him, scored his flesh deep with her pain. She struggled to release him, but the muscles in her fingers just wouldn’t unclench. 

“S-Sora,” she gasped out as another wave of pain rocked her. “I think… I think the baby’s coming.”

Then, her water broke and she let out a scream. 

Sora pried her fingers out of his skin, threw back the blankets, and vaulted out of bed. His face was pale, but he put on his jacket and shoved his feet into his boots. “I’ll be back with the midwife!” he called back to her as he ran into the night. 

“W-wait, don’t leave me,” Kairi gasped and clutched her stomach, but Sora was already gone. 

The time she spent alone in that cottage, wracked with contractions and unbelievable pain, were the most terrifying moments of her life. The baby was tracing the inside of her womb, harder and harder, faster and faster, as if to dig its way out of her. 

Kairi felt real fear sinking its cold claws into her. 

What if this was a child cursed with Freya’s dark cruelty? 

What if it did tear out of her like a monster?

What if… what if… what if?

Gasping, she pushed those thoughts away and tried to focus on breathing and relaxing. After what felt like ages and she was unable to calm down, Sora returned with the midwife.  
Without further ado, the midwife—a strong thick-boned woman with lots of tightly wound-black hair—shoved Sora out of her way and rushed to Kairi’s side. Relentlessly, she pulled Kairi out of bed and forced her to walk back and forth across the cottage until Kairi was screaming in pain and Sora looked as if he wanted nothing more than to hunker down with his hands tightly over his ears. Only then did the midwife allow Kairi to return to the bed. 

She gave her a small sip of cool water. “How close are the contractions?”

Kairi didn’t answer. She couldn’t. Another contraction wracked her and she could only scream.

The midwife grabbed Kairi’s shoulders and forced her back. Then, to herself she said, “It shouldn’t be this painful.” She turned to Sora. “Does she have an incredibly low threshold for pain?”

Sora shook his head and nervously approached the midwife’s side, hands clenched in his shirt. The woman hoisted Kairi’s bare legs over her shoulders and began looking around beneath Kairi’s robe for something Sora didn’t quite understand. 

Kairi was sobbing and screaming, “Please, please, help me. It hurts…” She didn’t know what was going on anymore. The pain and the baby clawing at her insides were all she could feel. She saw the blur of the midwife’s face between her legs and Sora’s distant concern. His big blue eyes were like pieces of sky. 

“Push! Kairi, listen to me. Stop screaming.”

There was a slap to her face.

“Stop it! Now, push, dammit!”

And Kairi did. All her muscles forced down, clenched and squeezed and she felt something deep inside her begin to move. The scratching stopped but Kairi’s heart was racing. She couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t catch up with herself. Everything was gone.

“Push, Kairi!”

She did. She was pushing forever. It felt as if it was never going to end—this pain, the midwife’s voice telling her to push, the pain, the blurred images of the little cottage, the pain, the pain, the pain! She bit her lip and tasted blood. She felt warmth on her face and whispered, “Sora?” but she didn’t’ hear him answer. Another contraction wracked her and she was told to push again.

Then, finally, she felt a cool cloth on her forehead and Sora’s soft voice whispering, “It’s over. You did it.” He kissed her sweaty forehead and pushed back her dark ruby hair. “It’s over, Kairi. You did it.”

“W-where’s the baby?” she gasped out.

He was quiet for a moment, putting a small glass of water to her lips and helping her to drink. Then, he whispered, “The midwife is cleaning them up.”

Kairi flopped back against the pillows and heaved in several deep breaths. Her vision finally cleared and she looked up into Sora’s pale face. He had dark circled beneath his blue eyes and his lips were pressed into a tight stressed line. Why? she wondered, but didn’t care enough to ask. She touched her smaller stomach and reached out. “Let me hold my baby,” she whispered. 

Sora left her side and returned with a beautiful baby girl with thick golden tresses and big blue eyes. 

“Oh, she’s beautiful,” Kairi murmured and took the child form Sora’s arms. She kissed her baby’s soft forehead and smoothed back some of that thick golden hair. There was no doubt in her mind that Freya was truly gone. There was no evil or darkness in this beautiful child, no darkness at all. She smiled and kissed Sora’s hand. “Look at my baby, Sora. Isn’t she beautiful?” 

But Sora was looking away and his hand felt cold in hers. 

“Congratulations, Kairi,” the midwife said and approached the bed. Her smiling face looked down into Kairi’s. “It’s triplets.”

Triplets… Kairi’s blood froze in her veins.

X X X

MWUAHAHAHAHA! How’s that for a different ending, all you wonderful good-natured critics?

(If it was unclear, Kairi gave birth to the Trinity sisters—Star, Freya, and Evangeline.)

And, drum roll please, we are finished!

Here we go. Very important author's note, as always:

First, drop a review and let me know what you think! Are the characters way out of character? Does everybody hate the entire Masterson clan and Freya? Think I torture Sora way too much (but it's because he's so easy to be mean to, though I always make sure to give everybody a happy ending!)? Are permanently disgusted and can no longer even play Kingdom Hearts thanks to me? Loved it? Hated it? Are scared for life because of what happened to mainly Sora? Are traumatized by the thought of evil goddesses living on earth and breeding? (Flames will be used to roast marshmallows and weenies!) Think I need to do more editing before I post chapters? Post to slow? Chapters are too short? Too long? Yada, yada, yada…

Second, I own nothing except my original characters (and there are a bunch of them in this story): Star, Freya, and Evangeline Trinity; their kids, Polaris, Frey, Nina, and Rose; Franny and Anastasia Romanov; Dirk and Vladimir Masterson; Rose-Red aka Diana Kisaragi; and Franny’s daughter, Juune. And I think that's everyone. At least I hope that’s everyone! (Jeeze! How many original characters did I need?!) I also own my plot! So there, now I can't be sued!

Third, there will be no sequel… at all, so don't ask!

Fourth, check out my first ORIGINAL NOVEL! **The Breaking of Poisonwood by Paradise Avenger.** (Summary: People were dead. When Skye Davis bought me at a slave auction as a birthday present for his brother, I had no idea what my new life was going to be like, but I had never expected this. It all started when Venus de Luna was killed and I was to take her place, to become the new savior… Then, bad things happened and some people died. In the heart of the earth, we discovered the ancient being that Frank Davis had found and created and used to his advantage. The Poisonwood—)

Finally, thank you for making it this far! All the way to the end! Woot! Yay!

And so, I bid you adieu. 

And go watch The Hunchback of Notre Dame! Rawr!

Questions, comments, concerns?


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